Description

Benjamin Grosvenor – Rhapsody in Blue – Limited Blue Vinyl Record

Benjamin Grosvenor's Rhapsody in Blue places a century-old American concert landmark beside music that reveals a different side of his pianism. Prepared to mark the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's 1924 premiere, the program opens with the familiar sweep of Rhapsody in Blue, performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Grosvenor approaches the piece as both a virtuoso showcase and a sequence of sharply contrasted characters. Its blues-inflected themes, rhythmic swagger and sudden lyrical spaces remain immediately recognizable, but the performance emphasizes the score's structural imagination as well as its brilliant surface.

Gershwin's rhapsody was written for Paul Whiteman's “An Experiment in Modern Music” concert and orchestrated by Ferde Grofé, whose scoring helped turn the opening clarinet glissando into one of the defining sounds of twentieth-century American music. Grosvenor responds to the work's hybrid language with flexibility: clipped rhythmic passages have bite, the broader melodies unfold without becoming heavy, and transitions feel spontaneous even when the larger arc is tightly controlled. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic supplies the color and momentum needed for the music's dialogue between jazz-derived gesture and the concert hall. This is a polished performance, but it retains the sense of risk built into the piece.

“Love Walked In” offers a more intimate Gershwin interlude. Percy Grainger's solo-piano arrangement turns the song into a compact concert transcription, allowing Grosvenor to shape the melody with warmth while drawing out the inner voices beneath it. The selection is well placed after the orchestral scale of Rhapsody in Blue: it keeps Gershwin's gift for memorable melody in focus while changing the perspective completely. Grosvenor's control of touch and balance is central here. What could become a decorative encore instead functions as a thoughtful bridge between the American first side and the French suite that follows.

Maurice Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin fills the second side in its complete six-movement piano form. Written during the First World War, each movement was dedicated to the memory of one of Ravel's friends who had died, yet the suite avoids overt mourning. Its Prélude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet and Toccata look back toward French Baroque forms through modern harmony, precise rhythm and extraordinary keyboard color. Grosvenor makes the contrasts count: the Fugue's restraint, the Forlane's subtle unease, the Menuet's poise and the Toccata's demanding brilliance form a sequence rather than a collection of isolated miniatures.

Decca issued this program on limited blue vinyl for the Gershwin centenary. It is also the first physical release to include Grosvenor's performance of Le tombeau de Couperin, giving the edition significance beyond its colored pressing. The pairing is unusually effective. Gershwin's public exuberance and Ravel's formal refinement come from different musical worlds, yet both composers transformed older materials through rhythm, harmony and instrumental imagination. Grosvenor meets each with clarity, personality and exceptional technique, making this LP an accessible introduction to the pianist as well as a carefully conceived anniversary program.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic