I started living in Paris in 2002, at least with one foot. Predictably, I fell in love with a Frenchy. Then, I fell in love with Paris. Finally, I fell in love with French music. (Love of French wine accompanied all stages.) But unlike many of my American friends living in this city who have become true expats, I have always kept my other foot in the United States. For many years it was New York; now it is Los Angeles. I am grateful for the opportunity to live between the two continents and extremely fortunate that my profession allows for this situation. I often say that if someone were to put a gun to my head and make me choose between Europe and America, I would probably get shot.

I’m not sure if I’m more américain-parisien or parisien-américain. Both croissants and bagels appeal to me, as do Hôtel du Nord and Sunset Boulevard. I am as excited to stroll past the elegant apartment buildings where Bizet and Ravel hung their hats, as I am to drive down the Los Angeles streets Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Rachmaninov and Gershwin called home.

Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that my debut album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme and explores the interplay between the two cultures in the early 20^th century. While the links between Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Gershwin were obvious, the thematic connection to my own life came as something of a surprise.

The unifying thread in the program is Ravel, who knew both Saint-Saëns and Gershwin. The latter two composers never met and, apart from their common penchant for melodious, colorful and light music, belong to completely different worlds. While the enduring value of Saint-Saëns’s music has long been questioned, if not even ridiculed (especially by his compatriots), it found favor with the highly critical Ravel. Ravel studied with particular attention the older master’s chamber music and orchestration, later citing Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos, along with Mozart’s, as inspiration for the 'spirit' of his own concerto.

Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, written more than 60 years before Ravel’s concerto in the parallel major key, indeed reveals similar attention to orchestral color, concision and wit yet, unlike the latter, never attempts to enter emotional territory much below the surface. Popularly dubbed 'the concerto that starts like Bach but ends like Offenbach', it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously either, in spite of its quite serious pianistic challenges. Still, passages of great beauty and charm abound in this unabashed bravura work that pays homage to its creator’s days as an organist.

As quintessentially French as they were, Saint-Saëns and Ravel appear to have been America-friendly. Both provided positive accounts of their tours to the US (though the composer of Le carnaval des animaux did complain about the poor treatment of animals in American zoos).

No music outside of the European Continent would influence Ravel more than American jazz, leading him to write in the American press in 1928, 'I like jazz far more than grand opera.' Ravel’s abundant use of jazz in his Concerto in G is undoubtedly the most discussed aspect of the work. But what impresses me is not the 'what' but the 'how': the piece doesn’t reflect a classically trained musician trying to write in another style, thereby diluting, simplifying or mimicking jazz’s core features; rather, it reflects a creator who makes the genre his own, masterfully employing its idioms and without resorting to cliché.

Probably no American composer was more influenced by the music of Ravel than Gershwin, and no French composer more influenced by the music of Gershwin than Ravel. After a series of telegram exchanges, the two met in Paris (the trip that planted the seed for Gershwin’s An American in Paris) and later spent time together in New York and Los Angeles. Their mutual respect is often illustrated by the legendary, perhaps apocryphal, story of Gershwin requesting to study with Ravel, to which the latter replied along the lines of: 'Why would you want to be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin? Plus, you make more money than me, so I should take lessons from you!' While Ravel was in New York, the two attended a jazz club together in Harlem, and Gershwin also played his wildly successful Rhapsody in Blue for Ravel.

But did Ravel ever hear Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody? As it happened, the Concerto in G and Second Rhapsody premiered within weeks of each other. Why the Second Rhapsody has been so eclipsed in popularity by the Rhapsody in Blue remains a mystery to me. It bears all the qualities of Gershwin’s genius and, in my estimation, at times even surpasses its prototype. Certainly it deserves to be played more often, particularly in this original 1931 version.

Andrew von Oeyen's album of piano concertos by Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Gershwin is out now.

“Perhaps it is no coincidence that my debut album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme,” says pianist Andrew von Oeyen of this programme of works by Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Gershwin. An American (of German and Dutch origin) who trained at New York’s Juilliard School, he lives between Los Angeles and Paris. He is partnered on the album by the PFK Prague Philharmonia under its Music Director and Chief Conductor Emmanuel Villaume – a Frenchman who is very much at home in the USA, as Music Director of the Dallas Opera and as a frequent guest conductor with America’s leading opera companies and orchestras.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to live between two continents,” continues Andrew von Oeyen, “and extremely fortunate that my profession allows for this situation. I often say that if someone were to put a gun to my head and make me choose between Europe and America, I would probably get shot! … As a musician of the 21st century, I’d like to think that my passport has little to do with the kind of artist I am; certainly, it doesn’t determine the repertoire I choose to play.”

The works he has chosen for this album are Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, dating from 1868, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, written between 1929 and 1931, and Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, composed in 1931, seven years after the better-known Rhapsody in Blue.

Praise for von Oeyen’s playing in the US has come from such media as the Los Angeles Times, which spoke of his “indisputable gifts [and] an extravagantly thorough and effortless technique,” concluding that “von Oeyen seems incapable of misarticulating a musical sentence.” In France, meanwhile, Le Monde de la Musique has said that: “Andrew von Oeyen has a technique remarkable in its fluidity, a precise and balanced way of playing, but most of all a disarming elegance and charisma that allows him to communicate with the greatest of ease.”

When it came to putting this album together, Ravel was, as von Oeyen explains, “the unifying thread in the programme – he knew both Saint-Saëns and Gershwin.” Saint-Saëns died in 1921 at the age of 86, just at the time Gershwin was achieving huge success. Ravel cited the older composer’s five piano concertos, works full of colour and elegance, as an influence on his G major concerto, but today’s listeners will inevitably be struck by its fusion of characteristic Gallic refinement (epitomised in a central movement of delicate poetry and discreet melancholy) with jazzy bluesiness and angularity. “No music from outside the European Continent would influence Ravel more than American jazz,” says von Oeyen. “In 1928 he even wrote ‘I like jazz far more than grand opera’. His use of jazz in his Concerto in G is probably the most discussed and obvious aspect of the work. But what most impresses me is that the piece doesn’t reflect a classically trained French musician trying to write in the style, thereby diluting, simplifying or mimicking jazz’s core features … Rather it reflects a creator who makes the genre his own, masterfully employing its harmonic and rhythmic idioms and without resorting to cliché.

“No French composer was more influenced by the music of Gershwin than Ravel, and probably no American composer was more influenced by the music of Ravel than Gershwin,” continues von Oeyen. The two composers met in Paris in 1926 when Gershwin was on the trip that led to the composition of An American in Paris. In 1928, when Ravel visited the US, he saw Gershwin’s musical Funny Face on Broadway, the two composers visited a jazz club in Harlem and Gershwin played Ravel his Rhapsody in Blue. Andrew von Oeyen recounts the famous anecdote – perhaps apocryphal – of Gershwin’s request to study with Ravel. The Frenchman replied: “Why would you want to be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin? Plus, you make more money than me, so I should take lessons from you!”

Ravel’s Concerto in G and Second Rhapsody received their premieres within weeks of each other. While Ravel’s concerto has become one of his best-loved works, Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody has not achieved the phenomenal popularity of Rhapsody in Blue. Andrew von Oeyen finds that hard to explain: “It bears all the qualities of Gershwin’s genius and, in my estimation, at times even surpasses its prototype. Certainly, it deserves to be played more often.”

A short piece that is an undoubted favourite completes Andrew von Oeyen’s album. It is an arrangement for piano of the soaring Méditation from the opera Thaïs by Massenet. Here too there is a Franco-American connection. The title role of the opera, first seen in 1894, was written for the charismatic soprano Sybil Sanderson, who was born in California, but enjoyed her greatest successes in Paris.

Andrew von Oeyen's Warner Classics debut: Saint-Saëns, Ravel & Gershwin Piano Concertos, is out in January 2017.

Warner Classics renews its collaboration with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and the orchestra’s music director and chief conductor Emmanuel Villaume, with a new album to be released in January 2017.

Critically acclaimed pianist Andrew von Oeyen makes his label debut with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and Villaume for a high-energy album of music by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Gershwin.

As with the orchestra's 2014 label debut Héroïque, with New Orleans-born tenor Bryan Hymel singing grand opéra rarities, the forthcoming release brings French and American connections to the fore.

Von Oeyen says that the choice of repertoire has been influenced by his own travels and the two centers of his international career. “I have been living between France and the US since 2002. Both Ravel and Gershwin appeal to me, as do croissants and bagels!” he explains.

“Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that my first album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme and explores the interplay between the two cultures. The unifying thread is Maurice Ravel, who knew both Camille Saint-Saëns and George Gershwin.”

A pianist of “indisputable gifts [with] an extravagantly thorough and effortless technique,” (Los Angeles Times), von Oeyen makes his Warner Classics debut with Ravel’s jazz-tinged Concerto in G and Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2 in G Minor, written 60 years earlier. Alongside these two French masterpieces, von Oeyen has opted for a rarely-performed work by the composer of An American in Paris: not the sparkling Rhapsody in Blue for which Gershwin is most famous, but his Second Rhapsody (1931).

“It bears all the hallmarks of Gershwin’s genius and, in my estimation, at times even surpasses its prototype. Certainly it deserves to be played more often, particularly in the orchestration heard on this album,” von Oeyen affirms. “Probably no American composer was more influenced by the music of Ravel than Gershwin and no French composer more influenced by the music of Gershwin than Ravel,” he adds.

Having made his debut at the age of 16 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, von Oeyen went on to study at the prestigious Juilliard School and Columbia University in New York. He now divides much of his time between Los Angeles and Paris.

Strasbourg-born Emmanuel Villaume was appointed Music Director and Chief Conductor of the PKF-Prague Philharmonia in September 2015. In February of that year, they made their Warner Classics debut in American tenor Bryan Hymel’s album Héroïque: Opera News praised “Emmanuel Villaume’s stunning work with the Prague Philharmonia throughout the disc”.

Andrew von Oeyen: Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Gershwin with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and Emmanuel Villaume will be released on Warner Classics in January 2017.