Word: confrey
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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GEORGE GERSHWIN--EVERYONE remembers him. But Edward Elzear ("Zez") Confrey? Pauline Alpert? John Green? Dana Suesse? Today no one can even pronounce some of these names, yet once upon a time--back in the 1920s and '30s--all four of these pianist-composers thrilled large audiences with a scintillating mix of ragtime, jazz and classical sounds that became known as novelty piano. Lost in the shadows cast by Gershwin's brilliance, they have been forgotten, and undeservedly...
...Pearl series. The easy virtuosity of Pauline Alpert's Rain on the Roof, with its cascading arpeggios and delicate filigree work, matches the best that classical contemporaries like Josef Hofmann or Josef Lhevinne had to offer. Her performance of Gershwin's Fascinatin' Rhythm out-Gershwins the great man himself. Confrey's rhythmically tricky 1921 showpiece, Kitten on the Keys, is novelty's signature tune, but his Humorestless, a clever musical pun on both Dvorak's Humoresque and Stephen Foster's Old Folks at Home, is equally typical of his exuberant style. Most ambitious of all was the "Girl Gershwin," Dana...
Gershwin is not the only performer whose works could be computerized. Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Debussy also recorded piano rolls. But it was such keyboard acrobats as Gershwin and Zez Confrey, playing in the florid "novelty" style developed to boost player-piano sales, who were the stars of their day. Says Wodehouse: "This will open up an era of music that has been largely forgotten...