Sparkling Gershwin to toast in the New Year

In one bit of Friday night’s MSO Pops program, conductor Marvin Hamlisch, guest pianist/singer Kevin Cole, vocalist Sylvia McNair and singer/tap-dancer Ryan VanDenBoom shared their personal awakenings to the music of George Gershwin. In every case, the music seized their imaginations as kids and never let go. Their stylish, expert performances showed a deep understanding of Gershwin and made their stories stick.

Cole, one of the world’s leading authorities on Gershwin, put together the program and, I presume, wrote the delicious arrangements. He opened with an ivory-busting piano solo on Rialto Rhythms and Fascinatin’ Rhythm. The two works together show both the young songwriter and America turning away from genteel ragtime toward its more raucous offspring, jazz. Cole has worked hard to get Gershwin’s piano style, and he has the same powerful, striding left hand. It put an electric rhythmic charge into the music, certainly the element that electrified New York in the 1920s.

Cole’s multi-faceted program put a shine on every facet of Gershwin’s output. In addition to the opening solo, he gave a rousing, wildly improvisational account of Rhapsody in Blue and an intense reading of the finale of the Concerto in F. The concerto, by the way, has never sounded more aggressively Modern to me than it did Friday.

Those pieces and splashy, developmental arrangements of Strike Up the Band and I Got Rhythm represented Gershwin’s concert-hall ambitions. But we love him even more for his show tunes and for their adaptability for everything from jazz to cocktail piano to singing in the shower.

Cole and McNair sang Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off and They All Laughed like a couple of pals having fun around the piano. They gave the show just the moments of lovely intimacy and simplicity it needed.

Well-placed, well-informed biographical information, accompanied by projected vintage photographs and snippets of film, helped put the music in context and make the man real. Cole gave special attention to Ira Gershwin and Fred Astaire’s roles part in Gershwin’s artistic life. VanDenBoom, a highly skilled latter-day song and dance man, was bring in the crucial dance element.

VanDenBoom is far more like Gene Kelly than like Astaire, which is fine. In I Got Rhythm, VanDenBoom’s big number, he found ingenious ways to reflect the ever-changing impetus in the very complicated arrangement. He swung from pounding it out to tripping daintily; at one point, he ripped out tattoos on a snare drum as he danced around it.

VanDenBoom and Cole possess pleasing, vernacular voices. McNair inhabits a different vocal plane. But she is that rare opera type who really gets the popular song. She reined in the vibrato and played to the microphone perfectly. Her matchless enunciation not only delivered the words and their sentiments, but also helped to etch the rhythms. Her wonderfully pure Summertime, purged of all diva carrying-on, is among the best I’ve ever heard.

All this adds up to one of the best programs of Hamlisch’s Milwaukee tenure. He conducted with zeal and purpose throughout, and the MSO responded with great energy, precision and awareness of style. Gershwin’s orchestral music sounds best when a surging bass line prods along a creamy, legato melody, and they absolutely got that. Todd Levy, as always, commanded the opening clarinet solo in Rhapsody in Blue from a high place. Assistant concertmaster Ilana Setapen, in the first chair for this program, played her many solos with just the right luscious extravagance.

This program, given at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall, will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and would be the ideal New Year’s Eve concert. However, Hamlisch said that the Saturday program is nearly sold out and directed the big Friday audience to talk up the 2:30 p.m. Sunday matinee. Call the Marcus Center box office, 414 273-7206 or visit the MSO website to order tickets.