I'd Prefer The Real Thing Thanks

The latest free cover disk with BBC Music magazine has the title Great American Classics and features pieces by Bernstein, Gershwin, Grofe and Ellington. On the whole it isn't really repertoire that grabs me. The Bernstein piece is Chichester Psalms with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Choirs of Scotland and Great Britain, the Rodolfus choir, boy treble Sam Adams Nye and conductor Martin Brabbins. It is a performance from the BBC Proms of 2006. The work is a curious mix of the Jewish cantor tradition and Broadway with some more traditional sacred music gestures thrown in. It is followed by Gershwin's Second Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, played by soloist Peter Jablonski with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Eric Stern. Jablonski does the piece proud but it tends to come across as like the more famous Rhapsody in Blue but without the tunes. That rhapsody was orchestrated by Ferde Grofe since Gershwin was struggling with the time scale of the commission and Grofe is represented on this disk by his Mississippi Suite played by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Keith Lockhart. This is really light music with risible native American pastiches and watered down jazz. The disk cloese with Duke Ellington's Harlem, again from a BBC Proms of 2008 and again with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales this time conducted by Kristjan Jarvi. An early attempt by Ellington to create orchestral jazz and gain credibility with classical audiences and players, I think he succeeded more later in his career. The piece works best when it is more or less full on jazz such as in the closing percussion section. This disk has been enthusiastically received in some quarters, it is simply the case that it is not the kind of thing that floats my boat.