V.com weekend vote: What is your favorite Gershwin piece?
Have you noticed that George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" has been performed with some frequency in orchestra concerts throughout the world this year?
Composer George Gershwin (1898-1937).
That is because this year marks the 100th anniversary of this landmark composition, which was premiered in February 1924 in New York City. A century ago, Gershwin's highly original, jazz-infused orchestra music shocked its listeners, who had never heard anything like it in a concert hall. Critics dismissed it as "circus music" and worse.
And yet it endures, 100 years later, and in hindsight, we can see that Gershwin's bold ideas helped chart a new course for American classical music - or at least helped to steer the course in a direction it wanted to go.
And when it comes to Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue" is just the tip of what probably would have been a very big iceberg, had the composer not died at just 38 of a brain tumor. As it was, he wrote a great many enduring works - "An American Paris," the "Concerto in F" for piano, the opera "Porgy and Bess," musicals and film scores, and many songs with his brother Ira Gershwin that became jazz standards, for example, "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," etc.
The music of Gershwin is very much on my mind, as last week I sat in the fiddle section for a performance of Gershwin's "Concerto in F," featuring the remarkable young pianist Clayton Stephenson, with the Long Beach Symphony and conductor Eckart Preu. This week I'll play in a performance of "Rhapsody in Blue" with the Pasadena Symphony, featuring pianist Stewart Goodyear and the orchestra's new music director Brett Mitchell. So much Gershwin!
What is your favorite piece by George Gershwin? Which one do you feel was most significant, in terms of its originality and/or influence on the next century of American music? Please participate in the vote and then share your thoughts below. And for fun, I put a few fun videos below. Feel free to post links as well!
This wonderful bit of film from the movie "An American in Paris" features the last movement of Gershwin's "Concerto in F" in its entirety, performed by the multi-talented pianist Oscar Levant. (The joke starts around 1:30, when you start to see that Levant is also conducting, he's also the violin section, he's also doing the marimba solo...)
My favorite recording of "Porgy and Bess" is the 1977 performance by the Houston Opera, it's breathtaking in its intensity. Here is the opening of the opera, "Summertime" - (my favorite is actually this mind-blowing version of My Man's Gone Now.):
You might also like:
- American Masterpieces
- Interview with Violinist Randall Goosby: 'Roots' and African-American Music
- The music of George (and Ira!) Gershwin
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Replies
For American in Paris, the benchmark recording is still the one made with Gershwin at the Celeste, conducted by his boyhood chum Nathaniel Shilkret. Fantastic pickup orchestra with a fair number of players from Philadelphia Orchestra and NYPSO, I believe. Original taxi horns and a very 20s aesthetic. Ravel, Picasso, and sharp-edged rectangular cars— not the oozing that Bernstein introduced later.
https://youtu.be/8yXUXnpRw-0?si=b4fyQkMJjIcawYdM
A tidbit for violinists- Gershwin had wanted to study with Ravel and was turned down. But I think that he used an important aria in Porgy to pay tribute to the Blues movement in Ravel’s violin sonata.
An interesting theory but the evidence seems to be just three notes XYX with or without a portamento and the interval isn't the same!
BTW we're currently rehearsing the concerto for performance on Saturday Nov 23 so if you happen to be in the region of Deddington Oxfordshire UK...
@Steve: great music for north Oxfordshire! I'm sorry I'm not nearby.
I voted for 'Porgy and Bess', but it was difficult to make the decision, and it must be said that few composers can get you singing and dancing the way Gershwin can.
Indeed, it was difficult to decide and so my vote went to P&B, but only because his opera is much longer than any of the other choices and therefore has more of the gorgeously beautiful melodies created by arguably the greatest tune-maker after Tchaikovsky and before John&Paul.
I was tempted to vote for Rhapsody in Blue for the wrong reason; Whenever the local orchestra schedules it I have the option of playing the rarely heard tenor banjo part. It's in the original Paul Whiteman/Ferde Grofe' small orchestra version.
I am definitely not a fan, there is an early piece called something like lullaby which I like and that is it
Joel-- the original arrangement could be fun, especially if attempts are made to capture the style. The big orchestra version taken up by the Boston Pops, et al, has changed our sense of how that piece should sound. And not for the better.
https://youtu.be/VxNbAtTMZXc?si=rHQHI9xoHCZfDYfg
In that vein, cut/pasted from above, the premiere (and still best) recording of A in P.
https://youtu.be/8yXUXnpRw-0?si=ew3sOJZxH5z1uV9A
"Lullaby" is a nice piece for string quartet (or orchestra) if you don't let it linger too much. It can sound sentimental if you make it too slow. Gershwin did it as homework when he was studying composition with Edward Kilenyi. And the main tune featured heavily in his early one-act opera "Blue Monday."
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November 11, 2024 at 08:21 PM · If anything, parts of An American in Paris seems to evoke a circus if you note traffic noises and such, but I mean it as a compliment rather then an insult. Isn't a circus performance meant to be a fun, crazy, busy highly cultural sort of event?