Jazz Inflections: Aleksey Semenenko/Inna Firsova - BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel adored each other’s music. Violinist Aleksey Semenenko and pianist Inna Firsova salute them both.

There’s something about the blues – a bittersweet sadness that never lets you go. Maurice Ravel put the blues at the heart of his beautiful Violin Sonata, while Tony Schemmer composed his own, very personal, tribute. And the blues soak every note of Gershwin’s great opera of African-American life and love, Porgy and Bess: we’ll hear it today in the fabulously stylish version devised by the legendary Hollywood-resident violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz.

Born in Odessa, violinist Aleksey Semenenko plays with a style – and a sound – that’s intensely personal and which has won him a string of international awards. Together with his regular musical partner, ‘poet of piano’ Inna Firsova, he’ll go straight for the melancholy, smokey soul of these 20th century classics.

‘The only love affair I have ever had was with music.’ - Maurice Ravel