Rhapsody in Blue turns 100 at the Philadelphia Orchestra

On 19th January in Verizon Hall, Yannick Nézet-Séguin turned from the podium and faced an unfamiliar sight: a super-attenuated audience. Concerts led by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director tend to sell out quickly, and the maestro expected a capacity crowd for a program celebrating the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. A winter storm had other plans, though, bringing the first significant snowfall the city had seen in nearly two years. According to an orchestra spokeswoman, only 762 of the hall’s 2500 seats were occupied for the Friday matinee.

The musicians rewarded those who braved the icy elements with a touch of hot jazz. Ferde Grofé’s arrangement of Gershwin’s masterpiece has been a repertory staple for decades, but for this outing, Nézet-Séguin engaged the Marcus Roberts Trio in place of a traditional piano soloist. Along with bassist Martin Jaffe and drummer Jason Marsalis, Roberts brought a freewheeling energy to the piece, turning the cadenzas into extended improvised sections. A tangy bossa nova riff proved especially spirited, sending the crowd into fits of mid-movement cheering that one might expect to hear at a nightclub.

Nézet-Séguin pointed out in pre-show remarks that the Trio’s choices would differ with each performance, as is customary in jazz. Having heard the Philadelphians play Rhapsody in Blue numerous times in recent years, I detected a greater sense of freedom in their interpretation too, even when they were bound to the notes on the page. Principal clarinetist Ricardo Morales always makes a meal of the opening run, but his approach here was even more elastic and sensual than usual. Nézet-Séguin leaned into extremes of tempo as well, drawing out the concluding measures in much the same way that Roberts extended his pianistic solos. The sound was hushed in certain moments, blaring in others, supporting the theory of the work as a love letter to New York City and all its sensory glory.

After a brief pause, the Roberts Trio treated listeners to their own arrangements of Leonard Bernstein’s Jet Song and Cole Porter’s What Is This Thing Called Love?, briefly turning the Kimmel Center into Philadelphia’s most swinging jazz spot.

Nézet-Séguin surrounded Rhapsody in Blue with two pieces composed more or less contemporaneously. A zesty rendition of Stravinsky’s Petrushka showed the orchestra off to its full massed glory. Because so much of the music is tied to action, a complete performance of the ballet score without accompanying dance can occasionally grow repetitive. The Philadelphians didn’t entirely solve that problem, but their rendition highlighted many wonderful individual voices: the supremely delicate flutes of Patrick Williams and Olivia Staton, the characterful piano of Kiyoko Takeuti, the humorous tuba of Carol Jantsch and the impish trumpet of guest principal Stuart Stephenson, on loan from the Dallas Symphony.

Kurt Weill’s Symphony no. 2 has been a Nézet-Séguin idée fixe for years – he recorded it with his Orchestre Métropolitain and introduced it to the Philadelphia repertory in 2016. It can be a confounding piece, with themes that volley rather than develop and a sound that suggests influence rather than an individual voice (the slow second movement is pure Mahler). The interpretation here was bracing and full-throated, perhaps a nod to Weill’s newly imposed exile as he composed the work. It’s not the kind of music that stays with you, but as heard here, it made your hair stand on end in the moment. Taken alongside the program’s other pleasures, it felt very much worth trudging out into the snow.