Levi Hammer: Gershwin in Vienna
decurio

Stranger bedfellows than George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg would be hard to imagine, yet Levi Hammer's debut solo piano album shows their works to be strikingly complementary. Not only that, Gershwin in Vienna reveals that despite the seeming incompatibility of their musical sensibilities the two were friends in California during the 1930s who each had high regard for the other's material. Hammer's release has value not only for illuminating the personal connections they shared but for featuring superb performances of their works and ones by the other card-carrying members of the Second Viennese School, Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

A celebrated conductor as well as pianist, Hammer's sensibility was shaped by years spent in both the United States and Europe. Iowa-born and exposed early on to the Great American Songbook, he earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music but also studied at the University Mozarteum Salzburg. Upon relocating to Europe, he spent three seasons in the German opera house system at the Komische Oper Berlin and Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. His extensive background as an assistant conductor includes productions with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Gurrelieder), the Aix-en-Provence Festival (Wozzeck), Lyric Opera of Chicago (Salome), and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Erwartung), and as a pianist Hammer's performed with the Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and New World Symphony.

In alternating between the composers' works, a prismatic effect is created such that a piece by Gershwin finds itself mirrored by one from Schoenberg, Webern, or Berg. It's telling that the final musical piece is Gershwin's Three Preludes in suggesting that the presumed divide separating his music from the others was growing smaller and might have continued to do so had his life not ended prematurely. It's staggering to imagine the additional work he might have created had he not died at thirty-eight of a brain tumour.

Recorded at Teldex Studio Berlin, the nearly seventy-minute release offers a terrific sampling of the composers' works, on the one side Berg's Piano Sonata, Webern's Variations for Piano, and Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces and Six Little Piano Pieces and on the other Gershwin's “Jazzbo Brown Blues,” the preludes, and eighteen piano transcriptions from the Great American Songbook (presented in two nine-song blocks). In an inspired move, Hammer chose to end the release with a touching radio tribute Schoenberg delivered following Gershwin's death. The respect the elder composer had for his young colleague is clearly communicated in the brief recording. When he utters, “There is no doubt that he was a great composer” and speaks admiringly of his musical contribution to the world, there's no doubting his sincerity.

As different as Gershwin and Schoenberg were, they shared connections, both of them Jewish, visual as well as musical artists, and tennis players, as a fascinating video capturing them at Gershwin's own court reveals. The affection the composers felt for one another is vividly shown in the release booklet in a photo of Gershwin painting a portrait of Schoenberg in 1934 and in the image of the photo portrait Berg gave to Gershwin after they met in Vienna in 1928 and that includes an excerpt from Lyric Suite as an inscription. (After exposure to the work at a private performance arranged for him by Berg, Gershwin hesitated, perhaps shyly, when he was asked to play some of his own music; Berg's encouraging words, “Mr. Gershwin, music is music,” speak to the respect Schoenberg's open-minded pupil had for his American counterpart. Elsewhere, Hammer persuasively contends that a brief chromatic passage in An American in Paris reveals the influence of Lyric Suite and also convincingly argues for parallels between Wozzeck and Porgy and Bess.) Gershwin didn't meet Webern, but the two were aware of their reputations in their respective musical worlds.

“Jazzbo Brown Blues” makes for a great portal whilst also highlighting the numerous strands that emerge in a given Gershwin piece—gospel, ragtime, and jazz swing all permeating Hammer's rendering; best of all, the composer's melodic genius is all over the material. Refraction marks the transition into Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, each an austere, inwardly probing, and shadowy statement Hammer humanizes with his expressive touch. Contrasts in pacing, mood, and dynamics help elevate the performance. Hammer's rendition of Berg's sonata is as scrupulous, with every developmental detail handled thoughtfully. Anyone thinking the music of the Second Viennese School lacks emotional intensity need only listen to this performance to be enlightened otherwise. Webern's Variations for Piano perpetuates the haunting introspection of Berg's sonata, albeit in micro-analytical form, its three movements prickly, sharply contoured, and in Hammer's hands hot to the touch (in his opinion, Webern's music “should be played like sizzling lava”). Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces is pointillistic and enigmatic but also riveting.

“Swanee” gets the first half of Gershwin's transcriptions off to a rollicking start, Hammer wholly attuned to the composer's spirit, and the high-spirited feeling is confidently sustained thereafter. A brief gentle moment emerges now and then, but for the most part the tone's celebratory, as illustrated by a breezy “Fascinating Rhythm,” jaunty “Oh, Lady Be Good!,” and infectious “Sweet and Low Down.” The second block's warmed at the start by a sweeping treatment of “The Man I Love” before the mood brightens for a rousing “Clap Yo' Hands” and beguiling takes on “'S Wonderful” and “Liza”—clouds rolling away indeed. Beyond being executed impressively, Hammer's treatments are effervescent and exhilarating. Despite carrying classically oriented markings, the three preludes are Gershwin through and through, be it the spirited and jazzy allegros that frame it or the bluesy andante at the work's centre.

June 2026