Music Monday - George Gershwin (1898-1937)

George Gershwin is way up there on my mental list of favorite American composers. From Rhapsody in Blue to the many wonderful songs ("Summertime," "Someone to Watch over Me," "Embraceable You," and "I Got Rhythm," just to name a very small portion of the man's output), his music bridges the gap between the Broadway stage and the classical concert hall.

Gershwin was the son of poor Russian emigrants who arrived in the U.S. a few years before he was born in 1898. At age twelve, he began to play the piano, and by age fifteen, had dropped out of school to hold down a job as a song-plugger in Tin Pan Alley. It was here that he became well-known among singers and other song-writers. His first song ("Swanee") was published less than two years later, and singer Al Jolson's recording of the song in 1920 received great acclaim.

With his brother Ira, George wrote many successful songs and musical comedies throughout his life. The now-famous songwriter sought out well-known composers for instruction in harmony and composition, and took sporadic lessons with musicians such as Rubin Goldmark and Henry Cowell. Besides the well-known Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and opera, Porgy and Bess (1935), Gershwin's classical works include a piano concerto (1925), a set of variations for piano and orchestra based on his song, "I Got Rhythm" (1934) and Cuban Overture (1932), along with several other pieces.

Anna Harwell Celenza has a perfectly lovely book featuring the story of how the composer came to write his first major classical orchestral composition: Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In it she mentions some of the influences on Gershwin's compositions, including ragtime and Klezmer. The book includes a CD of the piece, as well, as played by the composer himself on a piano roll.

I have two favorites of Gershwin's that are among his lesser known classical pieces: Lullaby for Strings, and Prelude No. 2 from a set of three Preludes for Piano (1926). There is a YouTube video of a string quartet playing the Lullaby in its entirety here. The video quality isn't great, but the audio quality is pretty good, and the quartet is decent, even if they play the piece too fast for my taste (faster than I played it back in my wedding gig-playing days, anyway). Here it is (in Amazon exerpt form) at the "right" speed, which makes it just, well, dreamy:



Recording by Vesko Eschkenazy "and friends" on the CD, The Fascinating George Gershwin.

And my other favorite, another somnolent selection--the second of three Preludes for Piano:



as played by the equally delightful Michael Tilson Thomas (one of my heroes) on the CD, Classic Gershwin.

Pleasant dreams!

Music Monday - Halloween Music No. 1

In honor of that most enjoyable of holidays which is fast approaching (25 days and counting), I give you this extraordinary version of Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens as performed by Vesko Eshkenazy.

This work is usually performed by a full orchestra, though arrangements for piano solo (by Franz Liszt and by Vladimir Horowitz) and for organ solo (arr. Lemare) and likely others also exist. I like this arrangement for violin and piano, which is probably the one transcribed by the composer himself.



As an aside, I first heard a snippet of this piece as the introduction of the British tv mystery series Jonathan Creek, and had to investigate to find out what larger work to which it belonged. I must have heard it before (I've been listening to classical music since I was in the womb), but it never clicked with me before that time. Tune in next week for another great violin piece from a fantastic mystery series.