George Gershwin, a composer of incredible talent, and Martynas Levickis, an accordion virtuoso of extraordinary charisma, will meet on the stage of the Pažaislis Music Festival, accompanied by the much-loved Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.
The concert will feature a version of Rhapsody in Blue arranged by Martynas Levickis himself and specially adapted for the accordion (the original version features a solo piano part), as well as excerpts from the French genius Georges Bizet’s Carmen Suite, which is also featuring the accordion.
The story of the creation of Rhapsody in Blue is worthy of its own description. For Gershwin, who had been writing musicals and songs for music halls, the call from Paul Whiteman, the leader of one of the top pop orchestras in the United States, was the main impetus for him to enter the academic music forest. Gershwin did not respond enthusiastically to his offer to write a jazz-style work for the orchestra, as he was busy with another Broadway project. But his compositional brain kicked in. Improvising once, he picked up on a haunting lyrical theme. It’s a good theme, he must have thought, but I don’t think it’s right for a song. Not the format. And suddenly… during a pool tournament between musicians in which Gershwin was participating, his brother Aira just ran up to him. He happened to open a newspaper and found a notice that the famous composer Gershwin was writing a jazz concerto and that the Whiteman Orchestra would perform it in a month. He needed to get to work immediately, but how? Form, transitions, development of themes, tonal plan, types of texture, orchestration… What a horror… For Gershwin, the enlightened idea of writing for piano and orchestra suddenly ignited all his creative potential. And it was the right decision. Mr Whiteman decided to give a massive three-hour concert – an education with the eloquent title “What is American Music?”. The aim was noble: to introduce the public, and more importantly the coryphiles of academic music, to the entire history of jazz, from the carriage blues to the latest jazz music, namely the newly composed work of Gershwin. Among those invited to the concert were Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Leopold Stokowski, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler and Leopold Godowsky. You can imagine how they felt sitting in the hall next to the plebes from 28th Street and pop stars, how stone-faced they were listening to songs like “Mama loves Papa”… By the end of the event, the audience looked tired and bored. But at the first sound of the clarinet glissando announcing – it’s me, G. Gershwin! – everything changed. The sleepy audience woke up, feeling a fresh breeze of a true 20th century wind. The success of Rhapsody in Blue was intoxicating.

Levickis, who adapted this legendary work for the accordion, was described by The Independent as “an incredibly talented man who is single-handedly reinventing the accordion”. He describes his instrument as a “magic box of tricks”. The soloist will be accompanied on stage by the Kaunas Symphony Orchestra, with whom Constantine Orbelian has recorded 20 albums over the last decade, including four Grammy nominations.