Music Chat: The Genius of Gershwin's Concerto in F
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มี.ค. 2022
- This, Gershwin's largest purely orchestral work, has been maligned as melodically lovely but formally amateurish--a work best suited to "pops" programs. The reality is just the opposite. However he got there, Gershwin's single piano concerto is as perfect and ingenious in form as it is gorgeous and instantly memorable in content. Let's take a closer look together.
Musical Examples courtesy of Naxos Records - เพลง
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Actually Gershwin DID buy a textbook to write the Concerto in F, but it wasn't a book about concerto writing. It was Colin Forsyth's "Orchestration," and he bought it to teach himself how to orchestrate. He'd taken a lot of heat from the classical music world because Ferde Grofé had orchestrated "Rhapsody in Blue." To a Broadway show composer like Gershwin, it wasn't that big a deal because Broadway producers considered composition and orchestration different skill sets. (When Kurt Weill came to the U.S. in 1935 and started writing Broadway musicals, his employers were astonished that he insisted on doing his own orchestrations.) But Gershwin was determined to present himself to the classical music world as a full-fledged composer, and he was sensitive enough about it that on the title page of "An American in Paris," he insisted on the credit, "Composed and Orchestrated by George Gershwin."
Gershwin’s Concerto in F is the finest American piano concerto and truly a work of genius. If anyone wants to dismiss this magnificent composition as an unserious bit of pops fun, that truly is nonsense, their problem, and simple narrow-mindedness. This is the kind of piece I could listen to every day. If only Gershwin had lived a bit longer, it would have been wonderful if he decided to write concerti in a similar vein for other instruments.
One of the few American works that have held up and never sounds it's age.
Fascinating. I hope more people will see this concerto as the masterpiece I always considered it.
This concerto is a highly original composition and skillfully organized. It also is a highly individualized and personal. Only he could have create this masterwork.
When I was a kid my father, a professional musician, was obsessed with the Concerto in F, and played the piano part every day, sometimes multiple times before the sun went down. Somehow I still managed to love this great work, even with the over-exposure. But I swear the analysis you give here never occurred to me, ever. This was a brilliant video Dave, and so heartfelt. One of your best!
Thank you!
The criticism of Gershwin reminds me of what was said for many years about Schubert and Tchaikovsky: "You can't be a truly great composer if you write great tunes"
GREAT VIDEO DAVE!!! Was so fortunate a couple of years ago to play this with my college's orchestra. I used to be a piano performance major before getting my philosophy undergrad degree. Love your explanation of this fun concerto!! One of my favorite moments performing on stage has been with this piece!! THANKS DAVE!!!! See you next time!
Being a timpanist myself , I really enjoy this Piano Concerto with the beginning and ending timpani solo
A wonderful talk Dave. Thank you.
Wow. Yes, yes. This is great. As a teenager I played Bach, Chopin and Gershwin. I went to Patelson’s Music House for the scores. The Concerto in F is one of my favorites for 60 years. Love your videos.
So happy to see a video devoted to this American masterwork. For me, Gershwin is the greatest American composer in the sense of expressing the American ethos so fully and so magically.
Thank you David for this clarification of the Concerto in F. It has, as you mention, often been seen as yet another rhapsody with wonderful tunes that Gershwin tried to squeeze into a classical form. The orchestration is also masterful.
Listening now to a masterpiece with new ears. Thank you David, such a delight to have you so often visiting us!
So great. Thank you so much, you just made my Sunday morning. Lovely interpretation as well, with the more relaxed tempo giving way to more sound and transparency of the refined harmony and voice-leading. Great, great, great!
Piano Concerto in F contains a wonderful thunderous theme that is heard a few times in the Movement # 1. It's powerful and exhilarating though also ominous & dramatic - a theme that I cannot forget.
The theme in question enters when the pianist starts to play - have heard you bring it up in this video.
Love this video! I have always loved this concerto and also couldn't understand why it doesn't get enough respect. Your channel has been giving me SO many ideas of the best versions to hear! Thanks for all the work.
GREAT! So glad for this.
Falletta's recording of "Catfish Row" is one of my absolute favorites.
Thank you so much for giving Gershwin the credit he deserves for this concerto. I reviewed David Alan Miller's recording (also on Naxos) last year for Fanfare, and it was a revelation - as I "kept on listening", I noticed more and more connections between the movements, and just what a unified, sophisticated and inspired work it is. No amateur or naif could pull it off. I broke out the recording earlier this week, and noticed one more little detail: the pentatonic flourish in the piano at the very end is a transformation of the rising dotted-rhythm figure at the opening of the concerto - mind blown!
Good catch!
Excellent!! I LO❤E this ! Thank you very much , David !!!
Thank you so much for this talk! I fell in love with this piece and the companion pieces on this doc when I got my St. Louis Symphony Vox Box decades ago. I so appreciate you taking us through it and shedding light on the formal mastery that Gershwin so amply displayed. Bravo, David.
Love this.
What an astounding video!. Deepest thanks for giving us your insights and analysis of this musical landmark. A fabulous work of art that compares with any other "classic" concerto. My first exposure to it was my father's copy of the version by Oscar Levant (with Kostelanetz?) which my dad played a million times. I agree with the Wild/Fiedler recommendation. A stunning disk. Thank you!
Thank you for this really interesting video chat about one of my favourite piano concertos. I've always liked the Previn/LSO version but I will certainly give the Earl Wild a listen.
My personal favorite has been the MTT/Yuja Wang version, but I plan to listen to the others as well. It is my favorite Gershwin piece for sure, and one of my top five classical pieces ever.
After I saw this, I bought this Falletta CD and found it’s very amusing. The recording engineering is very good too. If someone wants another Rachmaninov’s Paganini rhapsody, I think this will do. Your explanation of how it’s constructed is amazing. Thanks.
Enjoy!
You're no doubt aware, David, with Jack Gibbons' recordings of the authentic Gershwin. I am so glad he did those performances of Gershwin as Gershwin actually played how popular song arrangements and a number go other works. That did much to pay respect to and raise greater awareness of Gershwin's incredible abilities as a composer and pianist improviser.
The only person who played authentic Gershwin was Gershwin. But I enjoy Gibbons.
Today we will hear Trifonov with Philly/YNS in this work. The sound is guaranteed to be better than Entremont/Ormandy, but the spirit? We shall see. But we are re-listening to this excellent talk by Mr Hurwitz in advance.
You've done it -- you've shown them. Congratulations and thanks. And what piece it is.
Does anybody know of any professional recordings of the solo piano version arranged by Grace Castagnetta?
I've wondered about that, too, along with William Daly's solo piano arrangement of An American in Paris, but I haven't come across anyone at the professional level.
There a parts of the Concerto in F that you can hum along with and tap your feet to, and people that keep their noses stuck in the air, generally do not like that. Geroge Gershwin's music is always beautiful and engaging. And that was an issue contemporaries had with Chopin's music and with Tchaikovsky's music and others as well.
I had occasion to talk on several occasions with Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt, and neither had anything against GG.
Apparently when Schoenberg and Gershwin were playing tennis Gershwin asked Schoenberg to give him music lessons. Schoenberg said 'You're the one who's making all the money. You should be giving ME lessons.'
I think that was Ravel, but whatever.
Your review is genius -- YOU should write a concerto, include a gong! Tchaikovsky's 1st concerto suffers from similar malalignment. It, too, is entirely created from two sets of four notes: a plummeting bomb to begin with & those four notes: 5-6-7-1 that pull the mess out of the murky pond just before the opening piano chords. There is nothing else in the concerto.
I think at one time the Concerto in F was considered more than a "pops" programming piece. I can remember in the seventies hearing Bella Davidovich play the work with orchestra on TV, and she was kind of the antithesis of a "pops" performer!
Actually I think it is not just a wonderful masterpiece but also one of the really important influential pieces of the century because it is the first jazz concerto that really has a classical form. If you think about it it probably influenced not just Bartoks concerto but also Ravels g major concerto
I thought your reference performance was going to be Levant, but the Fiedler/Wild does have better sound.
Hello Dave, Do you think Gian Carlo Menotti based his Piano Concerto In F on Gershwin's Concerto In F? Everytime I hear the first few notes of the opening of the Menotti Concerto, it sounds to me like it's going to play that repeated marching tune in the first movement of the Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad) But I know nothing about music only what I enjoy listening to. C ya.....
I have no idea.
Dave, do you know the re - orchestration of the piece, made by Ferde Grofé, for the Paul Whiteman band? I've got a fine recording by the Metropole Orchestra , conducted by Jan Stulen, Jan Willem Nelleke on piano. To my taste, it sound better , more transparent than with a whole orchestra.
Not to me.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I love the Whiteman recording of the Concerto in F as rearranged by Grofé (and with Bix Beiderbecke playing, not the opening trumpet solo in the second movement, but the theme originally written for oboe but rescored by Grofé for muted trumpet or cornet). I understand Gershwin was ticked off big-time because Whiteman's cut-down and reorchestrated version was the only one made during Gershwin's lifetime, and Roy Bargy, Whiteman's regular pianist, was given the solo part. But it doesn't take the place of the full orchestral version by Gershwin and Gershwin alone.
The second rondo episode is not unique. It transforms a pentatonic motive that appears throughout the concerto. Just another example of Gershwin's compositional subtlety.
It is a new tune, but you are right in that several themes in the concerto share motivic material.
This is clearly a great work easy to ignore because its musical themes are not "classical" as one would see in such a work as the Grieg concerto. Tough! Do you know who else had trouble with large forms? Grieg!
I am not convinced of the great divide between "classical" and "popular" music unless the "classical" music is so pretentious that it is hideous or so uninspired that it is insipid, or that the "popular" music is witless, incompetent, or formulaic. I'm not naming names here. I'm tempted to believe that Venetians really loved their Vivaldi and that the response to Mozart and Haydn was much like that that went to Big Band music circa 1940. (That was the greatest 'popular' music ever -- unless you are to see Mozart and Haydn as I do; people just could never shake them off and never will).
The rejection of Gershwin is likely snobbery. Of course Gershwin wrote this music at the peak time for some of the scummiest thought ever... I need go into no details about that. A hint: someone like Wilhelm Kempff was not going to perform it with the Berlin Philharmonic at the time. Second, he wrote a huge volume of music that snobs always deprecate...OK, Gershwin did that with as much wit as anyone could, so if he was commercial he was excusable for that because he was so good.
All proof Gershwin was familiar with the Liszt Faust symphony and Franck symphony :P
Or not. It's more like proof that Liszt and Franck weren't as special or noteworthy as we sometimes like to think.