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When I was young, I had teachers who told me ‘THIS is how you play Mozart’ or ‘THIS is how you play Bach’. I can assure you: nobody plays Mozart or Bach now as they did back then. Which of course doesn’t mean they weren’t right. I could have been that lucky guy with just the teachers who were right about the ways to play all composers. And the rest of the world just has gone astray. I think not. Also, I have read books by really smart people about all they got to know about performance practice and historic correctness. However, hearing them perform doesn’t always make me happy, nor are they always interesting (unless you are interested in assessing how good they are in putting their money where their mouth is). Third, composers have been caught admitting that they liked performances of their pieces that were very different from their own. Good composers, too. I do think there is merit in knowing as much as you can about a piece and using that knowledge to prepare ways of interpreting or performing them. 'As much as I can' is of course a function of how smart I am, what sources I have access to, but also: how much time I have to prepare for a performance. If you don’t have much time, a lot of ‘improvisation’ enters the picture, where you adapt to circumstances, and make split-second decisions about how to continue or ease into a new section, during rehearsals as well as during performance. As a fulltime accompanist, I have to do that a lot. In my experience, being a good, saught-after musician is not only about playing everything ‘right’ but also being flexible and finding the right balance between imposing your style or knowledge and being humble and make concessions in the interest of the performance. Apart from that, it can also be fun to ‘just play’ a piece without giving too much thought to it. Like when sometimes you go to the bakery ‘just’ to buy bread, not asking yourself if bread is exactly the thing that your body needs, considering what you ate over the last week, or if maybe you could buy the cheaper bread and donate some money to charity instead of buying the more expensive bread, or if the baker herself meets all your moral rules and hygienic standards. That is life. That, also, is the life of a musician. If my performance gave you the impression that ‘THIS is how you play Gershwin’, I apologise. That was not my intent. It is a live performance that I remember well and that was almost accidentally recorded. I am proud of it because I know in what circumstances I did it and because people at that time thought and felt that it fitted the circumstances. And I think it sounds good! ❤🎶

@@tomdeneckere Thank you for your thoughtful response, Tom. You are clearly a talented pianist. I don't mean to suggest otherwise. It's just that Gershwin has been so maligned by so many-- & performed badly more often than not--that I think it's important to listen to recordings of Gershwin performing his own music to have a sense of his intended meaning & the spirit of this music. Gershwin is "like" jazz, which is a performer's art, & I think one who wishes to perform Gershwin well needs to study the Gershwin performances (and I do not mean to suggest that Gershwin is a jazz composer--too many have mistakenly assumed this!). I have spent many, many years studying the Gershwin style & playing Gershwin's piano music. It is a tremendously difficult idiom to get down right. Although GG was one of the great melodists, one falls short of the mark to stress melody at the expense of forward movement & rhythm. In this sense, it seems to me, the Gershwin idiom has much in common with the Baroque style. Go to the source. Listen to recordings of Gershwin performing his own piano music. Then I think you'll see what I'm getting at. Make the piano laugh & crackle, use very little rubato, resist the temptation to hold down that loud pedal, & keep moving! Actually, Gershwin is sui generis. He requires special study to get his music down right--& a great composer like Gershwin deserves close attention. I wish you well! May I suggest that you listen to Gershwin performing his 2nd Prelude on TH-cam? Then you might listen to some of Jack Gibbons's recordings of Gershwin, also on TH-cam. He's a first-rate pianist--& one of the precious few who understands the idiom & plays this composer extremely well. Good luck & have fun!

Love your analogy. It's perfect.

Me too

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I completely agree. He is vastly underrated. The pace of his music is like no other

Me too😊

and me 🥰

Sitting on a park bench.

Do you have a link to a performance? Perhaps?

There are at least two recordings of Gershwin performing it: Columbia 50107-D - Recorded in London, England on June 8, 1928 with a performance length of 2m37s and on the Rudy Vallée "Fleischmann Hour" Radio Program, November 10, 1932 - with a 2m32s recording length with an introduction, but performance is 2m03s. The tempo of the first recording is about 88bpm (as noted on the score), while the tempo of the second recording is perhaps the liveliest I've found at about 114bpm. Comparatively, Tom Deneckere performs it here around 56bpm. Gershwin was said to include these short preludes on various programs to fill up time, but Kay Swift noted about these preludes that 'Most people play the fast ones too fast and the slow one too slow'. Admittedly, there were time limitations while recording on 78s and (possibly) with radio programming. Still, while Gershwin described this prelude it as a 'blues lullaby', his performances of it (that have survived) make me wonder what he would think of the numerous versions recorded at largo tempos, which seem be more appropriate for a 'blues lullaby'.