By Stephen Brookes • The Washington Post • September 27, 2010
It’s easy to see why the Post-Classical Ensemble would embrace George Gershwin. This most American of composers has long been under-appreciated at home, relegated to pops concerts for the sin of drawing on jazz and popular music. But Gershwin is overdue for a fresh look, and that’s the Ensemble’s specialty: turning familiar music on its head, providing context and fresh perspectives, and generally pulling the rug out from under listeners. 
George GershwinThat was the strategy behind “The Russian Gershwin,” the Ensemble’s program on Friday night at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Center. Russia, it turns out, has long been crazy for Gershwin and taken him far more seriously than America has, and the group brought two gifted young Russian pianists to show us why – and maybe shake us out of our preconceptions.
But make no mistake: This was not some weird, exiled Gershwin smelling of vodka and revolution. On the contrary; pianist Genadi Zagor opened the evening with an introspective and elegant improvisation on Gershwin’s Prelude No.2, then seamlessly slid into an ultra-sophisticated (and altogether gorgeous) account of the concerto-like Rhapsody in Blue. Zagor’s a superb pianist, and provided his own imaginative, very personal improvisations for the solo piano parts, walking the fine line between jazz and classical with perfect balance.
Vakhtang Kodanashvili took a jazzier and more extroverted approach to the Piano Concerto in F, a too rarely heard wonder from 1926. Kodanashvili’s lean, exuberant playing contrasted nicely with Zagor’s more lush approach, and -- backed by razor-sharp playing from the Ensemble, led by music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez – resulted in a terrifically exciting account, and an edge-of-seat Cuban Overture brought the program to a close. Was a distinctly “Russian” evening? Maybe – but to these ears, anyway, the personal trumped the national, and in the end it didn’t matter: Gershwin was Gershwin in any language.