The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming 125th-anniversary concert will honor “beloved musicians of the past and present,” writes Madeline Mitchell in Sunday’s (1/12) Cincinnati Enquirer (OH). “A 1924 perforator recording of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ will be played by the ‘ghost of Gershwin’ on a Disklavier piano, which operates in playback with moving keys, hammers and pedals…. The symphony will accompany Gershwin’s ghost, led by CSO music director Louis Langrée—just as they accompanied the live Gershwin in 1927, under the direction of Fritz Reiner.… Langrée [said], ‘Why shouldn’t we try to invite back the ghost of Gershwin?’ …. The night opens with a world premiere commission by retired CSO principal bassoonist William Winstead [featuring] the current musicians of the CSO, the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra and retirees…. The symphony will perform … Duke Ellington’s ‘New World A-Comin’,’ which the CSO recorded with Ellington in 1970.” Also on the program: Exil! by former CSO Music Director Eugène Ysaÿe; Daniel Bjarnason’s ‘Collider,’ premiered by the CSO in 2015; and Scriabin’s Prometheus: Poem of Fire, with “each key on the light keyboard corresponding to a color that will light up onstage, Langrée said.”
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