New Year’s Concert
Paris, Paris

Alain Altinoglu

In 1926 the 28-year-old George Gershwin travelled to the French capital, determined to study under Maurice Ravel. Their meeting was warm, but lessons were out of the question – ‘Why should you be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?’ And so Gershwin crossed the pond again, taking the sound of a few Parisian taxi horns home as a souvenir. Two years later, he incorporated them into the orchestration of An American in Paris, a vibrant ode to life in the City of Light. The bustling boulevards, the tourist hotspots along the banks of the Seine, the cafés and Parisian nightlife: he translated all the impressions of his stay into a colourful and rhythmically irresistible rhapsody with a jazzy touch.

More than a decade later, Manuel Rosenthal, who did study under Ravel, was commissioned by the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo to compose new ballet music. During an American tour of the company, the ‘Parisian in Boston’ drew on Jacques Offenbach’s operetta La Vie parisienne to create a score that perfectly captures the light-hearted charm of the French capital by night.

Swinging rhythms, graceful waltzes, fleeting romances and champagne flowing freely until the early hours: 2027 opens with a New Year’s concert full of joie de vivre!