"Rhapsody in Blue"

Dear John,
Yes, I know about the "missing 4 minutes" discovered by pianist/musician Alicia Zizzo - who did the score that was the basis for my Pianola arrangement of BLUE MONDAY. I also know about the BSO 'premiere' of this version.
She located a handwritten version - in the composer's own script - and also recorded it for Pro Arte CD's, of which I have a copy. Both Robin Pratt and I (I played it on the 'phone at the time the recording came out) believe it's a "work in progress" and not THE ORIGINAL version, of a piece that went through many changes and additions. For example, the "Mysterioso" (machine imitation) section before the Coda is missing on my PRIMO (in-house) Duo-Art demonstration roll and also in the early Harms score (before Grofé 'orchestrated' it) as an "extra" or "option".
This version has Liszt-imitation cadenzas in it, which stop-the-action in my opinion ... leading Lois, Robin and me to consider it to be something that Gershwin fiddled with, but didn't hammer down in that form.
Years ago, I took the Armbruster FAKE-Gershwin roll of the piece for Duo-Art and a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody #2 roll and intercut them, going back and forth from one to the other ... and the piece "stalled" in a similar fashion. (It was done as a joke, reading the 2 rolls on my Leabarjan, and making this hybrid arrangement to play in the early '60s.) Both pieces are in the Key of E and both have measures and measures of the same chord progressions - which I discovered as a teenager by comparing and sight-reading the 2 rolls. (Somewhere this Duo-Art roll is in my boxed up old projects, today.)
She and Edw. Jablonski - the Gershwin authority - decided this was THE VERSION and it's getting the hype along those lines.
Meanwhile, Masanobu Ikemiya (and his NY Ragtime Orchestra) premiered a version based on (a) my PRIMO roll, of which he bought one of the 43 copies beyond mine;(b) the acoustic pre-Grofé acoustic Victor 78 with the BLUE LABEL and (c) his own ideas. We heard one of the first performances at Dover-Foxcroft, ME a couple of years ago, and he 'phoned recently to say that this was being recorded for CD's and tapes, very soon'. Mas (as he calls himself on Ragtime/Gershwin performances) "toyed" with the music, added mordents and tossed the music back and forth among his select group of musicians.
The Ikemiya trans. OUTDID the Gershwin 78 and had all the youthful Jazz Age ambiance the piece deserves. I doubt if I'll ever heard anything as terrific as that version again, and Lois agrees.
On-stage before the performance - not knowing I was in the audience - he said how he based this new arrangements upon a special demonstration roll and the composer's 1st recording (a tape of which I had supplied to him). He told the packed house at the Foxcroft Academy that this "jazz band" version, where piano and band were ONE allowed for rubato effects and all sorts of interplay that would be impossible with a symphonic ensemble. [Whiteman later had a 100-piece orchestra on the Stanley Theatre chain, for example.]
Anyway, it's interesting to hear this early "4 mins. extra" version, but knowing the Liszt connection to the music and also the fact that Gershwin tweaked his music on Broadway and in the concert hall to fit the occasion, I don't consider it to be THE SOURCE and find its "Liszt stalling" to be an irritant when compared to the early Harms 'Jazz Band & Piano' edition.
For example, the "cut music" from PORGY & BESS - after a Boston try-out - later turned up as a suite called "Catfish Row"!
Hope to come out with a 3-roll Set based on the PRIMO roll, Ikemiya's version and my own ideas, a high speed roll for Duo-Art which would give better staccato. The PRIMO roll starts at Tempo 100, not the Armbruster "60" on the 'Muzak' rolls dumped on a naive Duo-Art public long after the debut at Aeolian Hall.

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