Roger Lent: The Sublime Gershwin
Espressivo

With The Sublime Gershwin, pianist Roger Lent offers a fascinating take on the titular composer in a set-list nicely split between familiar and unfamiliar pieces. Offsetting the less commonly heard Promenade in C Major, Impromptu in Two Keys, and Three Quarter Blues is Gershwin's 1924 solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue. As familiar as the latter is, however, Lent gives it a dramatically original reading that in being so disarming allows it be experienced anew. He's certainly well-equipped for the project. A New York City resident since the late ‘90s, Lent earned a Master's degree in music at Rutgers University and has performed throughout North America and Europe, with appearances at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Montreal Jazz Festival, and The Edinburgh Jazz Festival some of the venues at which he's played.

Comfortable in multiple milieus, Lent proves to be an optimal Gershwin interpreter, given the composer's gift for integrating folk, blues, ragtime, jazz, and classical elements into melodically resonant material. Influences as diverse as Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Chopin can be heard in his compositions, such range consistent with a cosmopolitan artist whose work naturally drew from the cultural multiplicity of early twentieth-century New York.

The pieces Lent selected aren't drawn from Gershwin's extensive song catalogue but rather ones he wrote strictly as instrumental music. Up first, Seven Preludes ranges widely, from the rapid, aptly titled “Fragment” to its polar opposite, 1925's “Melody no 17,” whose slow, pensive drift evokes near-imperceptible cloud movements; as always, however, Gershwin's music retains the capacity to surprise, which it does here by in the form of two fast-paced interjections. That aforementioned ragtime influence surfaces in 1919's “Novelette in Fourths” but so too does a rousing quality. One critic referred to the 1923 “Rubato” as a “frank salute to Chopin,” which is easy to understand when its slow romantic theme is so lovely, but Satie could arguably be referenced too. Though a title such as “Prelude I in Bb Major” suggests classical formality, the piece's swing reflects jazz as much and even, if tangentially, tango. Blues, on the other hand, seeps into “Prelude II in C# minor,” which gives the piece a brooding, late-night feel.

Without losing the stamp of Gershwin's melodic sensibility, Two Waltzes in C Major exudes a buoyancy consistent with material originally written as incidental music for a Broadway show. Much the same might be said of Promenade in C Major (1937), which was used in a scene from the Hollywood movie Shall We Dance. Three Quarter Blues (1923), on the other hand, advances slowly with graceful melodies that imbue it, subtly, with the feel of a gospel spiritual.

As mentioned, the recording's major surprise is Rhapsody in Blue for Lent's handling of the iconic work. I'm hardly familiar with every recorded version, but compared to those I've heard his stands apart for its use of slower tempo: for an Oregon Symphony performance, for example, its estimated duration is listed as fifteen minutes, and many a solo piano version lasts between thirteen and fifteen, including ones by Gershwin himself; Lent's, by comparison, exceeds twenty-one. Whereas many a treatment is boisterous and brisk, his slower treatment takes on a ponderous, even doleful quality that presents it as ruminative reflection more than celebration. The tempo issue aside, his interpretation rivals others' in his sensitive handling of pacing, dynamics, melodic articulation, and rhythmic pulse. Even if one's preference is for the more established tempo other pianists have used, Lent's nevertheless presents a fascinating alternate treatment that, especially when coupled with the recording's other works, makes the fifty-six-minute release worthy of recommendation.

April 2020