Gershwin: Two Waltzes in C

Jazzy swing and classical virtuosity – interpreted by an unusual ensemble: the sisters Katja and Marielle Labeque are one of today's best-known piano duos, and their Gershwin is almost as legendary as the music itself.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk (born in 1829) was a composer-pianist best known as a virtuoso performer of his own works. He spent most of his working career outside of the United States. Although he became extremely famous in Europe and America when he died his reputation did not survive for very long afterwards.

He showed an early aptitude for music and, at the age of five, was given private lessons. When only 13 years old he was taken to Paris to continue his studies but was turned down by the head of the piano department at the Conservatoire, owing to prejudice against Americans. Such was his prodigious talent that early obstacles were overcome and, at 16, he gave his first recital at the Salle Pleyel, after which Chopin declared that he would become "the king of pianists".

His first composition to gain recognition was Bamboula (track 6 on disc 1 of this set) and this lead to a string of 'hits' wherever he performed. On returning to America he began to tour extensively and slowly to build as great a reputation there as he had in Europe. In 1865 he was forced to leave his native country because of a sex scandal involving a female student and never returned. The final years of his short life were spent touring the countries of the Caribbean and South America. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1869 after collapsing at the piano.

The second disc here contains the remainder of Pennario's Capitol recordings of music by Gottschalk and continues with a selection of popular pieces by Scott Joplin (1867-1917), an African-American pianist-composer who became known as the "the king of rag". Like that of Gottschalk, the popularity of Joplin's music went into decline after his death but received a revival in the 1970s, largely due to the efforts of Joshua Rifkin and the film 'The Sting'. This second CD ends with some of George Gershwin's piano music played by Leonard Pennario.

Leonard Pennario (1924-2008) was an American virtuoso pianist who recorded over 60 LPs, most of them of composers dating from Chopin and later. He is perhaps best known for championing certain composers such as George Gershwin, Rachmaninov, Miklós Rózsa, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Sergei Prokofiev. In 1958, he equalled Walter Gieseking in terms of sales of classical records by pianists.

Arguably the best-known of all 20th-century composers, George Gershwin's music encompasses with equal skill both the classical and popular genres. He was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York City, in September 1898 to immigrant Jewish parents. He died at the early age of 38 from a tumour in the brain.

Gershwin started to show an interest in music from about the age of ten and, although receiving some piano tutelage, was largely self-taught in composition. It was only later in his career that he received some formal instruction in composition.

Gershwin's first employment was as a song plugger for a New York music publishing company. His first song was published in 1916 and a year later he had his first commercial successes with the rag Rialto Ripples. This was followed, in 1919, by his first big international hit, Swanee. Now established as a successful composer of popular songs, between 1919 and 1933, Gershwin produced, in collaboration with his elder brother Ira, some of the most successful Broadway musicals.

In 1924 he was commissioned by the band leader Paul Whiteman to produce what was to be his first 'serious' composition, the Rhapsody in Blue. This was followed a year later by the Piano Concerto in F and, in 1928, by An American in Paris. His opera Porgy and Bess was first performed on Broadway in 1935.

This collection includes pieces from “Gershwin at the Keyboard” (Originally called George Gershwin’s Songbook), as well as some of his piano preludes. Containing some of the composer’s most popular songs from shows and musicals, we have favourites such as Fascinating Rhythm, The Man I Love and ‘S Wonderful. Waagaard is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music.