I was going to post something else today but this is too cool not to share. The performance is sourced from a 1992 radio broadcast, and don’t worry about the audio. It only takes a few seconds to improve.
Buechner (still alive and performing today!) is a fantastic musician who has never gotten the recognition she deserves, in part due to her status as the first significant transgender pianist. This performance of her own transciption of Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody is absolutely gorgeous, in particular featuring an Art Tatum-like light touch in the fast sections. I’ve included some spoken comments made before the performance that actually managed to help me open my mind to a piece I’ve never thought much about before:
"This was one of Gershwin's only works that really did not go over well. The critics panned it mostly because they thought he was trying to capitalize on the Rhapsody in Blue with a cheap sequel, which is really not the case at all. It's a rather extraordinary piece of music, which has only become more popular with the Gershwin revival of the past 15 years or so. This is really Gershwin in the 30s, not the 20s. It's far more sophisticated in it's harmony, and the way the motives are used-the almost Wagnerian leitmotifs-is very interesting for Gershwin. In fact, the entire piece spawns out of this simple repeated-note motive played by the piano at the start. It reflects not only his studies with Schillinger, but even the influence of Schoenberg..."
"This piece is one of the very best products to come out of Hollywood- it dates from just 1932, just before the Golden Age. It's for piano and orchestra, but a few years ago I was so enamored with the piece, and I knew there is a solo transcription of the Rhapsody in Blue. I was sort of curious- why not try and make a solo transcription of this piece? So I wrote it down in the summer of 1988 and played it several times."
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The broadcast recording was found on the Internet Archive, played live in-studio.