What you don't see on the graphically appealing cover: This album celebrating the American-European bond includes a premiere, namely the first recording of the critical edition of George Gershwin's "American in Paris" in juxtaposition to the previous edition. The 104-bar longer edition compared to the previously usual edition was already recorded in the eighties, but without the corrections to the score material that distinguish the critical edition. The additional bars are found at the end of the score, which is thus two and a half minutes longer, and they clearly change the musical flow by changing the final merging of the different melody lines. Some of the corrections made in the critical edition are not noticeable when listening to the composition. The other part, however, is all the stronger noticeable: the saxophone contributions are more detailed and the chaotic Parisian car traffic, which was already chaotic when the composition was written, is now reflected in the climax of the composition in a completely cacophonous concert of car horns, the tuning of which now corresponds exactly to Gershwin's specification for the first time.
The booklet contains an informative interview with Louis Langrée, the French conductor of the album and the orchestra director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Among other things, he points out that it has wrongly become customary to interpret the "American in Paris" with a good portion of "Swing", since it only became fashionable as a jazz style in the 1940s, and not twenty years earlier when Gershwin created this composition and Ragtime was in. So, the "American in Paris" on this album swings much less than usual in both versions included there. In addition, Louis Langrée prefers the French flair in this Gershwin composition, which is often given as the rumbling performance of an American cowboy in elegant Paris, so that the composition has something of the elephant in the china shop. The elegant line that Louis Langrée gives to the "American in Paris" changes the impression it makes on the audience at least as much as the corrections contained in the critical edition of the composition.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra follows its conductor's lead and proves in the Gershwin, as in the two other orchestral pieces on this album, to be an ensemble of the very first order, in no way inferior to the so-called Big Five of the USA orchestras. What a Klangrausch, what a virtuoso mastery of the extremely complex and sometimes wild composition "Amérique" by Edgar Varèse, which as a "Frenchman in America" is in a way a counterpart to the "American in Paris", and which requires a monstrous line-up of orchestra that wants to be mastered with a strong conductor's arm. Louis Langrée clearly is up to this challenge and allows his formidable orchestra to bring in all the playfulness and soloistic brilliance in the "Symphony in C" by Igor Stravinsky, himself half French and half American.
The album Transatlantic is a real sensation and an absolute must for every classical music listener on all levels: the selection of the pieces, the interpretation by the conductor, the playing of the orchestra and the information value thanks to the Gershwin composition, based for the first time on its critical edition.
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Louis Langrée, conductor