Anna Fedorova speelt Rhapsody in Blue

Anna Fedorova

Ukrainian piano phenomenon Anna Fedorova, based in the Netherlands, reached a multi-million audience via YouTube with her Rachmaninoff interpretations. Her seemingly effortless virtuosity, coupled with intimate, poetic lyricism, is legendary. In this American-Parisian get-together, she swings the house down with Gershwin's delightful Rhapsody in Blue .

Rhapsody in Blue, Ravel and Debussy

When George Gershwin asked Maurice Ravel in Paris if he could study with him, Ravel replied in surprise: "Why would you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?" Gershwin took that remark to heart, and from then on, he brought the worlds of jazz and classical music together in an inimitable way. And so he brought jazz to the concert stage. Rhapsody in Blue , with its famous clarinet sweep at the beginning, is one of the most appealing and swinging examples of this. Maurice Ravel, in turn, was inspired by jazz. With La valse, he navigated between nineteenth-century sonority and biting sarcasm. One hears a homage to waltz king Johann Strauss Jr., the other a commentary on the decadent bourgeoisie that, shortly after the First World War, "danced on the edge of the volcano." Debussy's La mer is an impression of the ocean, in which Debussy makes us feel that the sea is a dangerous lover who will not be mocked.