Saint-Saëns, Ravel & Gershwin: Piano Concertos Andrew von Oeyen

• Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921): Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 22:
• 1 I. Andante sostenuto 11:31
• 2 II. Allegro scherzando 05:59
• 3 III. Presto 06:28
• Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937): Piano Concerto in G Major, M. 83:
• 4 I. Allegramente 08:37
• 5 II. Adagio assai 09:23
• 6 III. Presto 04:05
• George Gershwin (1898 - 1937):
• 7 Second Rhapsody 14:42
• Jules Massenet (1842 - 1912):
• 8 Méditation (from Thaïs) 05:17
• Total Runtime 01:06:02

Info for Saint-Saëns, Ravel & Gershwin: Piano Concertos

Living as he does between Paris and Los Angeles, pianist Andrew von Oeyen is the ideal interpreter for this enticing programme: flanking Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 and Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, it explores Franco-American cross-currents. Von Oeyen is partnered by the PFK Prague Philharmonia under its Music Director and Chief Conductor Emmanuel Villaume.

“Perhaps it is no coincidence that my debut album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme,” says pianist Andrew von Oeyen of this programme of works by Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Gershwin. An American (of German and Dutch origin) who trained at New York’s Juilliard School, he lives between Los Angeles and Paris. He is partnered on the album by the PFK Prague Philharmonia under its Music Director and Chief Conductor Emmanuel Villaume – a Frenchman who is very much at home in the USA, as Music Director of the Dallas Opera and as a frequent guest conductor with America’s leading opera companies and orchestras.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to live between two continents,” continues Andrew von Oeyen, “and extremely fortunate that my profession allows for this situation. I often say that if someone were to put a gun to my head and make me choose between Europe and America, I would probably get shot! … As a musician of the 21st century, I’d like to think that my passport has little to do with the kind of artist I am; certainly, it doesn’t determine the repertoire I choose to play.”

The works he has chosen for this album are Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, dating from 1868, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, written between 1929 and 1931, and Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, composed in 1931, seven years after the better-known Rhapsody in Blue.

Praise for von Oeyen’s playing in the US has come from such media as the Los Angeles Times, which spoke of his “indisputable gifts [and] an extravagantly thorough and effortless technique,” concluding that “von Oeyen seems incapable of misarticulating a musical sentence.” In France, meanwhile, Le Monde de la Musique has said that: “Andrew von Oeyen has a technique remarkable in its fluidity, a precise and balanced way of playing, but most of all a disarming elegance and charisma that allows him to communicate with the greatest of ease.”

When it came to putting this album together, Ravel was, as von Oeyen explains, “the unifying thread in the programme – he knew both Saint-Saëns and Gershwin.” Saint-Saëns died in 1921 at the age of 86, just at the time Gershwin was achieving huge success. Ravel cited the older composer’s five piano concertos, works full of colour and elegance, as an influence on his G major concerto, but today’s listeners will inevitably be struck by its fusion of characteristic Gallic refinement (epitomised in a central movement of delicate poetry and discreet melancholy) with jazzy bluesiness and angularity. “No music from outside the European Continent would influence Ravel more than American jazz,” says von Oeyen. “In 1928 he even wrote ‘I like jazz far more than grand opera’. His use of jazz in his Concerto in G is probably the most discussed and obvious aspect of the work. But what most impresses me is that the piece doesn’t reflect a classically trained French musician trying to write in the style, thereby diluting, simplifying or mimicking jazz’s core features … Rather it reflects a creator who makes the genre his own, masterfully employing its harmonic and rhythmic idioms and without resorting to cliché.

“No French composer was more influenced by the music of Gershwin than Ravel, and probably no American composer was more influenced by the music of Ravel than Gershwin,” continues von Oeyen. The two composers met in Paris in 1926 when Gershwin was on the trip that led to the composition of An American in Paris. In 1928, when Ravel visited the US, he saw Gershwin’s musical Funny Face on Broadway, the two composers visited a jazz club in Harlem and Gershwin played Ravel his Rhapsody in Blue. Andrew von Oeyen recounts the famous anecdote – perhaps apocryphal – of Gershwin’s request to study with Ravel. The Frenchman replied: “Why would you want to be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin? Plus, you make more money than me, so I should take lessons from you!”

Ravel’s Concerto in G and Second Rhapsody received their premieres within weeks of each other. While Ravel’s concerto has become one of his best-loved works, Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody has not achieved the phenomenal popularity of Rhapsody in Blue. Andrew von Oeyen finds that hard to explain: “It bears all the qualities of Gershwin’s genius and, in my estimation, at times even surpasses its prototype. Certainly, it deserves to be played more often.”

A short piece that is an undoubted favourite completes Andrew von Oeyen’s album. It is an arrangement for piano of the soaring Méditation from the opera Thaïs by Massenet. Here too there is a Franco-American connection. The title role of the opera, first seen in 1894, was written for the charismatic soprano Sybil Sanderson, who was born in California, but enjoyed her greatest successes in Paris.

Andrew von Oeyen, piano
PFK Prague Philharmonia
Emmanuel Villaume, conductor

Andrew von Oeyen
Hailed worldwide for his elegant and insightful interpretations, balanced artistry and brilliant technique, Andrew von Oeyen has established himself as one of the most captivating pianists of his generation.

Since his debut at age 16 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mr. von Oeyen has excelled in a broad spectrum of concerto repertoire — Bartok, Barber, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Fauré, Ligeti, Liszt, Gershwin, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Schumann, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky — with such ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Saint Louis Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra, Ravinia Festival Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, Utah Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Marseille, Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, Slovenian Philharmonic and Slovak Philharmonic. As both soloist and conductor he has led concerti and orchestral works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel and Kurt Weill. On July 4, 2009, von Oeyen performed at the U.S. Capitol with the National Symphony in “A Capitol Fourth,” reaching millions worldwide in the multi-award winning PBS live telecast.

Mr. von Oeyen has appeared in recital at Wigmore Hall and Barbican Hall in London, Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Boston’s Symphony Hall, Zürich’s Tonhalle, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, Bolshoi Zal in St. Petersburg, Dublin’s National Concert Hall, Royce Hall in Los Angeles, Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Sala São Paulo, Teatro Olimpico in Rome, in Bucharest, Hanoi, Macau, and in every major concert hall of Japan and South Korea.

Mr. von Oeyen’s 2016/2017 engagements include, among others, a European and North American tour with the Prague Philharmonia (including performances as both soloist and conductor), appearances with the Vancouver Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Calgary Philharmonic, Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra and the orchestras of Grand Rapids, Oklahoma City, Wichita and Boise. He will also appear in recital in San Francisco and throughout Europe. In 2018 he will make his debut with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Fenice in Venice.

Mr. von Oeyen’s 2015/16 engagements included, among others, appearances with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in St. Petersburg, Detroit Symphony, Prague Philharmonia, Chicago’s Grant Park Festival Orchestra, American Youth Symphony, Portland Symphony, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra and Winston-Salem Symphony. He also appeared in recital throughout the US and Europe and performed at the Royal Opera House, Muscat, for the Sultanate of Oman’s New Year’s Eve Gala.

In June 2016 Mr. von Oeyen signed an exclusive recording contract with Warner Classics. His debut album under the label will be released in January 2017 and will include works for piano and orchestra by Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Gershwin. In 2013 Mr. von Oeyen released a critically acclaimed album of Debussy and Stravinsky piano works under the Delos Label (including two pieces written for him by composer, David Newman), following his 2011 award-winning album of Liszt works under the same label. 2013 also saw the release of the Chopin-Debussy-Ravel digital album “Andrew von Oeyen: Live in Recital.”

Mr. von Oeyen, of German and Dutch origin, was born in the U.S. He began his piano studies at age 5 and made his solo orchestral debut at age 10. An alumnus of Columbia University and graduate of The Juilliard School, where his principal teachers were Herbert Stessin and Jerome Lowenthal, he has also worked with Alfred Brendel and Leon Fleisher. He won the prestigious Gilmore Young Artist Award in 1999 and also took First Prize in the Leni Fe Bland Foundation National Piano Competition in 2001. Mr. von Oeyen lives in Paris and Los Angeles.

Booklet for Saint-Saëns, Ravel & Gershwin: Piano Concertos