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Gershwin & Wild

Gershwin & Wild —Joanne Polk, piano (Steinway 30090)

From the ArkivMusic website: Earl Wild’s Seven Virtuoso Etudes transform Gershwin’s popular songs into works that challenge the technical prowess of the best concert pianists without losing the underlying style of the originals. His Variations on ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ is a free pianistic realization of the tune, in much the same way that Liszt’s operatic “paraphrases” are free interpretations of vocal music popular in the mid-19th century, suggesting that the worlds of classical music and American popular song are not as far removed as we think. Joanne Polk was catapulted into the public eye with her recordings of the complete piano works of American composer Amy Beach on the Arabesque label. She celebrated the centennial of Beach’s Piano Concerto by giving the work its London premiere. She was recently named one of Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year.