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Does anyone here play this piece? I've played it for years and years and never really heard anyone else's rendition- was surprised to hear just about everyone playing twice the speed I do, many times with a swing feel that turns it into a pretty interesting piece of blues. I've always played it very slow and lullaby-ish.. curious about anyone else's take on it?

I've played it.
Gershwin's own rendition certainly doesn't drag and is fairly "straight."
My favourite pianist, Cherkassky, made an absolute dog's dinner of the piece when he played it (as he did of the Concerto in F) with excessive rubato and lack of underlying rhythmic stability...naughty Shura!

I have played it before, I used a pretty slow tempo as well.

I play it slowly too, and I assumed it was supposed to be straight because (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't looked at it in years) aren't there some rhythms actually writeen in that would be swing-style? By that I mean dotted 16th or whatever...it just seems I recall there were a few written in, which to me led to the belief that the rest were NOT supposed to swing. I think it has a plaintive, lullaby quality like you said.

I remembered Zimmerman has a video on youtube. you may want to check that out. I did played the whole set solo and the violin /piano duo version by Krisler or Heifetz.....don't really remember. 2 glasses of wine should help improving your rendition.

There is a recording of a radio show in which Gershwin anounces the piece as "A sort of blue lullaby." He plays the piece at around crotchet=116.

I don't play it, but my edition (source unknown) indicates Andante con moto e poco rubato, with 88 to the quarter note.

Steven

I think a lot depends on the amount of rubato used. I play it with a minimum rubato and try to keep it otherwise at a pretty steady andante. I would be interested in comments on the 2nd development section. Should the left had be played staccatto? assuming you don't cross hand it.

My son played this a few years ago. I think he was 12. At first he played it with a lot of overt swing. He got taken apart for that in a very kindly fashion during a master class. Actually, the professor who worked him over is now his teacher!

This was his take at that age: Second Prelude

He went back and looked at it again recently. Now he doesn't have to roll any of the chords. And he tends to play it a bit slower. Some of the swing is coming back .... in a tasteful way.

I admit, I am definitely am all over the place with the tempo, with the exception of the left hand melody part.. although my opinion is definitely based on playing it the same way for like 8 years and never hearing another rendition until now, heh. Interesting replies, mayhaps I'll try balancing the two approaches.. the quicker/groovier style does make sense and sounds good, but I still think the chords and melody are more interesting when drawn out. I kind of play the whole thing like a strings score for a film noir, i guess....

As for that 2nd part, I've always played it quicker and with some swing, but still very legato. No offense, I think the staccato version makes it sound silly.

edited for revised opinion!

I listened to Gershwin's studio recording of the piece, made in London, which he plays a tad slower than when he gave the radio broadcast (crotchet around 108). The middle section in both performances is not staccato; in the radio performance the rubato is rather freer but in neither is the tempo appreciably slower but, rather, played with a richer tone appropriate to the register in which the melody is set. Gershwin dots the quaver figures starting at the third bar of the middle section (corresponding with what is notated in the second bar) and the second note of the triplet figure (bar 6 of the middle section) he elongates so that the third is shorter.

Many of Gershwin's songs, such as "Someone to watch over me" and "For you, for me, forever more" have been mauled and mulled over by maudlin torch singers and crooners from the forties onwards and it's only recently that contemporary performances from Gershwin's era have been re-examined, showing that a much brighter, wittier style of performance was expected then. I think it's missing the character of the second prelude to play it too slowly.

My copy of the GG Prelude 2 from IMSLP (Russian edition) has the metronome beat marking at 88 ... which is about a third up on the Andante sub-division (varies from 76 to 108) ... that radio broadcast tempo at 108 would suggest that he was back in his home town New York dodging wild taxis.

No that's when he was in London, presumably dodging pigeons in Trafalgar Square...the 88 must have been when he was groping his way through "A Foggy day."
Back in his own home town he upped the tempo to 116.

The edition of the Prelude, edited by Alicia Zizzo, for Warner in 1996 gives no metronome marking. I used to use the old Chappel edition but can't remember if it had metronome marks.

btb brings up an interesting point.

I usually give some weight to a composer's recording of their work. A recording gives a window into the composer's mind. Indeed, we can all bring new insights and some of our own ideas into a work, but a composer's recording at least gives a foundation. That's all fine and good, except that a single recording is a snapshot of the composer's intent at one point in time. It's a form of anecdote, if you will.

But what if the composer has no fixed intent, and instead allows his or her own take on the music to wander quite a bit depending on circumstances as different as a change in venue (or audience) to personal growth over time. Your foundation becomes a bit shaky in interesting ways.

I must admit that I cringed when I first heard Gershwin's crazy fast take on the piece. It just sounded like he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible to go have a beer. It's about as far from Lenny Bernstein's over-the-top encore version of the piece as I can imagine. But hearing that Gershwin recording did broaden my understanding of the piece a lot. Exaggerated swing is NOT an inherent component of the work, and tempo is a choice.

BTW, my son's teacher politely (and with tongue in cheek) asked me to burn the Alicia Zizzo edition that we had used. She more seriously asked me to replace it with one whose editor did not choose to rewrite Gershwin's marked dynamics to suit her tastes. If I recall, there are also some wrong notes in the Zizzo edition as well.

My 2¢: If I played this piece the way I heard Gershwin play his own music on a recording from a piano roll, I'd play it both straighter and faster than I choose to play it for audiences today.

Before you pillory me for second guessing Mr. Gershwin, hear my thinking.

I believe that it is **impossible** to play a piece like the 2nd Gershwin Prelude as it would have been played at the time it was written and achieve the same, or even, similar effect on the listener. Think about how many more different types of music the average audience member has heard than a similar person would have experienced in Gershwin's time. The difference is IMMENSE. Heck, "Rock", "R&B", "Funk", "Grunge", "Retro" didn't exist yet. People might have a single radio in a house for an entire family; jet airplanes didn't exist.

The point is that not only was the acoustic milieu different in Gershwin's time, so was the musical consciousness.

And that's why I play the aforementioned piece slower and with more rubato than he did. To me the piece evokes a speak-easy or a gin mill; the air is filled with smoke; a singer, voice roughened by too much smoke and booze, croons the melody slowly, looking out at an indifferent crowd... Gershwin, IMO, was attempting to bring the Jazz and Classical worlds together so the straight folk who listened to the classics got a taste of that other world.

It's our job, performing that music, to fulfill the Spirit of that intention, informed by tradition, but unfettered by it.

My 2¢...

The faster speed in the radio broadcast might have been due to the fact that the sponsors wanted Gershwin to get a move on in order to get to the important part of the show...the plug for Feenomint laxative (something that the Trafalgar Square pigeons have never been in need of!). However, the fact that Gershwin's London recording of the piece is only marginally slower than his other version suggests that when he wrote "Con moto" he meant it.
I have Oscar Levant's recording somewhere, which I will check, when I can find it, but I seem to remember he didn't hang about when playing Gershwin.
While I don't greatly care for Alicia Zizzo's recordings of Gershwin, I'm prepared to trust her when she tells me in the introduction to her edition that it is printed in "a two-tone edition so that the performer will be able to identify everything originally written in Gershwin's own hand." However, I will confess that the effect isn't as obvious as it might have been which might explain the remarks of your son's teacher (perhaps she might consider investing in some new spectacles!).

Thanks for the 108 Tempo clarification and the Tra pigeons bit ...couldn’t resist a re-visit to George Gershwin’s "A Foggy Day" ... and am presently listening to my Zoom H4 rendition ... bringing back memories of those early pre-1960 days when the winter London fog closed in to reduce pedestrians to a state of near blindness ... pavement lights loomed and disappeared in bizarre sequence ... but how with-it of brother Ira to have climaxed the lyrics with

"For suddenly, .... I saw you there ...
And through foggy London town
the sun was shining ev’ry ... where."

My favourite recording is by Shirley Bassey ... anybody agree?

The impossibility of the task depends on who the listener is.
Cherkassky was my favourite pianist...but I hated how he dragged this prelude. Give me a good "con moto" at any time.
Your "Torch song" interpretation of the piece doesn't correspond to what Gershwin said about it as he called it a "Blue lullaby." I don't think babies were allowed in speak-easies even though the "nanny state", thankfully, wasn't around in the 20s.

Don't forget the opening lyrics:
"A foggy day in London Town
It had me low, it had me down."

Crotchet 88 has the same effect on me.

I don't know Shirley Bassey's version of the song, but I've always enjoyed Ella Fitzgerald's recordings of Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers etc. as she doesn't feel the need to over-sentimentalize the numbers in order to sing them with feeling.
Oh, and Bobby Short's "camp" cabaret style of performance is very refreshing too, especially after hearing the lugubrious versions of certain crooners.

I play this piece quite a bit more slowly than the example of piano-son when he was 12. A slower tempo just seems right to me, without bothering too much about Gershwin's intent. Gershwin himself made some recordings of the preludes and they seemed extremely fast to me. I felt it had to do with the "short take" of recording technology at the time, i.e., he may have speeded it way up just to make it fit.

Gershwin presents an interesting quandary for pianists, as both the popular culture and the classical culture lay claim on him. Popular pianists take a piece, or a "song," as they say, and make it their own, while classical pianists will pay attention to what they interpret as being the composer's intent.

A pianist is forced to self-identify as to who and what he or she is.

Tomasino