After last year’s Illinois Symphony Orchestra pops concert, it wasn’t long before conductor Karen Lynne Deal began planning for this year’s pops.
Not long, as in minutes.
Simon Tedeschi had just finished playing piano with the orchestra on a program that featured the music of Leroy Anderson.
“He and I, after the concert last year, were having dinner,” Deal recalled in a recent telephone interview. “We kind of planned it together.
“I said, ‘Hey, I’d love to have you come back.’
“He goes, ‘I’d love to come back.’
“I said, ‘Well, do you want to come back next year?’
“‘Sure, what do you want to do?’” Deal recalled Tedeschi saying.
She proposed “Rhapsody in Blue,” Tedeschi offered an entire concert featuring music by George Gershwin, and this year’s “Gershwin at the Pops” was born.
In addition to “Rhapsody,” Saturday’s concert will include “An American in Paris,” “Cuban Overture” and symphonic excerpts from the opera “Porgy and Bess.”
Deal said Gershwin’s lasting appeal owes much to his American heritage. That is, he was writing in a musical tradition more familiar to us than, say, the German tradition that gave rise to composers such as Beethoven.
“The main thing is that Gershwin’s music is based on ragtime and early jazz idioms. And those were popular music forms,” Deal said.
“He was a pops piano player; he wasn’t a classical piano player. He was a songwriter, he was a Tin Pan Alley guy — his life wasn’t spent writing symphonic music. His life was spent writing music that was popular and idiomatic of the time in which he lived.”
Tedeschi, 27, is a native of Sydney, Australia, who now lives in Boston. Last weekend, he was in Denmark for two concerts with the Lyngby-Taarbæk Symfoniorkester, performing Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
Tedeschi spoke to The State Journal-Register via e-mail from the Copenhagen Airport.
State Journal-Register: Do you have any strong memories of Gershwin’s music in your life?
Simon Tedeschi: I have a very strong association with Gershwin in my life. I have been playing his music for such a long time and coming from a similar background myself, I really feel his Jewish-Eastern European heritage. I also appreciate his blues writing.
SJ-R: Do you remember the first time you played a Gershwin piece?
ST: First time I played a Gershwin piece was “Rhapsody in Blue,” when I was 12. I have been performing it ever since.
SJ-R: How would you rate the difficulty of Gershwin’s pieces as opposed to, say, a Brahms concerto? Do you have to practice a lot for a concert like this?
ST: The “Rhapsody” and “Preludes” are all very difficult pieces, but of course very different challenges to a German romantic concerto. The biggest challenges are to understand and cultivate the blues sound and form and to capture the amazing syncopations. That always requires practice — doesn’t matter how many times you play the piece.
SJ-R: Do you spend a lot of time learning new pieces to add to your repertoire or do you spend your time mastering a smaller number of pieces?
ST: I spend a lot of time adding new pieces, because I am lucky in that orchestras and presenters often ask me to play specific pieces that I have never played before. So I am always adding to my arsenal and trying to improve my skills.
SJ-R: How do you spend your time — on the road, practicing?
ST: I’m on the road a great deal, and when I’m not I’m either practicing or hanging out with my fiancee Julia and my two beautiful cats, all of whom I miss.
SJ-R: At what age did you know you wanted to be a concert pianist? Did it seem like a realistic goal?
ST: I was 5 when I realized it was what I wanted to do. And I wasn’t thinking of realism or anything like that — I just knew I had to do it. I don’t think I had any idea of what was realistic at that age.
Brian Mackey can be reached at brian.mackey@sj-r.com or (217) 747-9587.
Illinois Symphony Orchestra: Gershwin at the Pops
Simon Tedeschi, piano
* When
8 p.m. Saturday
* Where
Sangamon Auditorium, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Springfield
* Tickets
$42, $37, $20 ($10 military and students); available at the Sangamon Auditorium ticket office, by phone at (217) 206-6160 or online at www.sangamonauditorium.org.
