Gershwin Memorial Concert
From the Original Vinyl LP
Side One:
1. Prelude No. 2
Arranged and Conducted by Otto Klemperer
2. Concerto in F (First Movement: Allegro)
Oscar Levant, Piano
Charles Previn:
Conductor
3. Song Group
Conducted by Victor Young
A. Swanee
(Lyrics by Irving Caesar) - Al Jolson
B. The Man I Love
(Lyrics by Ira Gershwin) - Gladys Swarthout
C. They Can't Take That Away From Me
(Lyrics by Ira Gershwin) - Fred Astaire
Side Two:
Excerpt from the Opera: "Porgy and Bess" -
(Lyrics by Dubose Heyward and Ira Gershwin)
A. Introduction and Summertime
- Lily Pons
B. My Man's Gone Now -
Ruby Elzy and Hall Johnson Choir
C. Buzzard Song
- Todd Duncan and Hall Johnson Choir
D. The Train Song
- Anne Brown and Hall Johnson Choir
E. I Got Plenty O' Nuthin'
- Todd Duncan and Hall Johnson Choir
F. Bess, You Is My Woman Now
- Todd Duncan and Anne Brown
G. I'm On My Way
- Todd Duncan and Hall Johnson Choir
with Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Alexander Steinert
__________________________________________________
On
July 11, 1937 George Gershwin, the man who made an “honest
lady out of jazz” died suddenly of a brain tumor while in
Hollywood where he had been composing film music with
brother Ira. He was 38. Gershwin’s twenty brief years of
creativity produced numerous Broadway shows, the only
authentic American folk opera, and a number of more serious
compositions for piano and orchestra which bridged the “gap”
between popular and classical music – all of it being
immortal music that would long outlast its mortal
creator.
To attempt to recreate the impact felt
at the time of Gershwin’s passing is impossible. The word
spread like a forest fire out of control. Gershwin music
flooded the airwaves; radio stations from coast to coast
broadcast memorial tributes which included such performers
as Al Jolson in New York, Fred Astaire in Hollywood and Paul
Whiteman in Texas. Planning began for memorial concerts –
the first being at Lewisohn Stadium in New York with the New
York Philharmonic Orchestra. It was an immediate sellout.
Then in Hollywood a tribute of massive proportions was
announced; a Gershwin memorial concert, on September 8, to
benefit the Southern California Symphony Association. Just a
few months prior George had played and conducted an
all-Gershwin program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Orchestra, which turned out to be the concert event of the
season.
The Friday immediately following George’s
death, all film studios in Los Angeles observed a minute of
silence in his memory. Hollywood had been George’s new home
(he had moved there from New York in late 1936), his friends
would now pay homage to him in the grand style only
Hollywood could muster – a concert involving seven
conductors, a half dozen singers, two piano soloist and a
full symphony orchestra. The program was broadcast live
throughout the world. Listeners at home had the extra bonus
of hearing Edward G. Robinson and others eulogize George and
share their personal thoughts about him.
The
night of the concert, traffic on Highland Avenue (which
leads to the Hollywood Bowl) was at a standstill. Even with
a police escort, some performers spent half an hour trying
to enter the Bowl from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel,
several blocks away. Fred Astaire saved himself the bother
by walking. Attendance was over 22,000, many still arriving
when conductor Otto Klemperer began the program.
The
Los Angeles Times called the concert “a huge, enormous and
colossal success.” The Hollywood Reporter stated that it was
“an historic event in American Music History.” That night,
twelve years after the first Gershwin piece was heard at the
Hollywood Bowl, a new tradition commenced, that of an annual
all-Gershwin concert. This tradition has been followed
faithfully for the most part, and, in fact, saved the
Hollywood Bowl from bankruptcy one year.
Of the
many and varied performances at the concert, Ira Gershwin
often tells an anecdote about a song anthology by MGM’s
Music Department. The orchestra was augmented with extra
players to present this overblown Hollywood medley of eight
Gershwin evergreens. As they began the pompous proceedings,
Ira, who did not recognize a simple tune of his brother
(being weighted down with superfluous orchestration), turned
in puzzlement to his tone-deaf friend, writer Arthur Kober,
to ask what they were playing. That performance is not
included in this album.
Otto Klemperer’s own
orchestration of George’s Second Prelude is a fascinating
document. Klemperer, conductor and music director of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, arranged the Prelude as a Funeral
March for the occasion. He had a great affection for George
and his music, and this is the only recorded example of
Klemperer conducting Gershwin.
The hit of the
evening was Oscar Levant’s rendition of the Concerto in F.
Levant, an intimate of George’s, had perhaps a better
understanding of serious Gershwin than anyone. George had
asked Levant to play the Concerto in a Lewisohn Stadium
concert in 193, as he had taken on the chore of performing
his two Rhapsodies for piano and concerto, and left a bit
overtaxed to handle the Concerto as well. After that
Lewisohn Stadium concert, George’s mother strolled over to
Oscar, looked him straight in the eye and said, “Promise me
you won’t get any better.” Promise or not promise, we are
fortunate that Levant adopted the Concerto and Rhapsody in
blue in the years following George’s death, and became their
supreme interpreter.
The conductor in this
performance (only the first movement is included here) is
Charles Previn, who conducted George’s first Broadway show
in 1919, “La La Lucille,” and is the uncle of Andre Previn.
The song group on this disc was conducted by
Victor Young, at that time the conductor of Al Jolson’s
weekly radio program, “Shell Chateau.” The trio begins with
Gershwin’s first big hit “Swanee.” Jolson’s rendition of the
song is as legendary as Judy Garland’s Over The Rainbow, or
Paul Robeson’s Old Man River. It is impossible to know how
many times Jolie warbled the number after interpolating it
into “Sinbad” in late 1919, but one can safely assume that
it ran into the thousands.
The late-blooming
perennial, The Man I Love, was made popular in the U.S. by
Helen Morgan following its success in England. However,
Morgan never commercially recorded the song, so we can only
imagine how her frail, sad and torchy performance of Ira
Gershwin’s lyrics would have sound. We do have, however,
Gladys Swarthout’s rendition of the song sung in a gutsy
manner unusual for a concert singer. Swarthout and her radio
conductor William Daly were both friendly with George and
frequently programmed Gershwin music on “The Firestone
Hour.”
At the time of the concert, it was thought
that They Can’t Take That Away From Me was the last song
that George had composed, and Fred Astaire’s singing of this
number was introduced as such. Gershwin’s last two film
projects A Damsel In Distress and The Goldwyn Follies had
not yet been released, and Love Walked In was not to reach
the Hit Parade until 1938. Our Love Is Here To Stay, truly
George’s last song, did not achieve popularity until 1951
when MGM released An American In Paris.
Fred
Astaire and George were close friends who inspired each
other to some of their greatest creative moments. They
started together in the theatre with their siblings, (Fred’s
sister Adele and George’s brother Ira) in the early part of
the century. Ira and George wrote some of their greatest
songs specifically with the Astaires in mind. Fred’s
performance here of They Can’t Take That Away From Me is
perhaps his most moving rendition of it, and includes the
rarely heard verse.
To many, the serious music of
George Gershwin was still a new experience in 1937. While
most knew Summertime and It Ain’t Necessarily So, they
didn’t know they were but a small part of George’s Grand
Opera, Porgy and Bess. First performed in 1935, Porgy and
Bess, with a libretto by Dubose Heyward and Ira Gershwin,
lasted only 124 performances, and was a financial failure.
Critics gave it mixed reviews, with the majority on the
negative side.
Gershwin, however, never doubted
the greatness and lasting value of his creation maintaining
that it would be revived often in the years to come, to
great acclaim. He had remarkable foresight.
For
this Hollywood Bowl performance, conductor Alexander
Steinert (“Porgy’s original vocal coach) led three of
George’s original cast choices, along with the Hall Johnson
Choir and Lily Pons. Lily Pons? Gershwin had great
admiration for her, evidenced by is composition of a piece
for Miss Pons which, to this day, remains unpublished. (Ira
never cared much for sopranos, stating, “They always sing
flat.”) Her rendition of Summertime in a sort of “French
English” remains a unique and fascinating document.
Ruby
Elzy never made any commercial recordings of the songs from
Porgy and Bess, so it is of historical interest to have her
powerful rendition of My Man’s Gone Now sung exactly as she
did when playing Serena in the original production. Elzy, a
favorite of the Gershwin brothers, died tragically at an
early age.
Todd Duncan and Anne Brown have
achieved legendary status as the composer’s original choices
for the roles of Porgy and Bess. They brought depth and
meaning to their portrayals of the characters, realizing
that perhaps they were creating operatic lovers no less
classic than Tristan and Isold, or Pelieas and Melisande.
The
Buzzard Song was original deleted from “Porgy and Bess” for
time reasons, though reinstated in later productions of the
show. Duncan’s rendition of it here is wrought with an
emotional frenzy unequalled by any subsequent
performance.
The Train Song is a rarely heard
choral segment of the opera sung by Bess and the inhabitants
of Catfish Row at the close of Act 1.
I Got
Plenty O’ Nuthin’ (also known as The Banjo Song) is Porgy’s
carefree philosophy of life sung in the second act. When
first playing the song for Duncan, George described it as
Porgy’s ‘great aria.’ He instinctively realized that it
would become Porgy’s and Duncan’s famous trademark the world
over.
Perhaps the most moving moment in the opera
occurs when the lovers share the passionate duet Bess You Is
My Woman. This deceptively simple aria is one of Gershwin’s
greatest melodic creations.
The opera ends with
Porgy’s triumphant finale, I’m On My Way. It is a tribute to
the genius of George Gershwin that his music is more popular
than ever today, and that this memorial concert sounds as
vital and fresh now as it did when originally performed. As
Ira Gershwin wrote many years ago, upon lyricizing George’s
last song:
In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar
may tumble
(They’re only made of clay),
But – our
love is here to stay.
And so is our love of
Gershwin Music.
– Michael Feinstein and Celia Grail
__________________________________________________
Love Is Here To Stay © Copyright 1938 by Gershwin
Publishing Corp.
Used by permission of Chappell and
Co.
Cover Painting: “Self-Portrait in Checkered
Sweater,” George Gershwin, 1936
Used through the kind
permission of Ira Gershwin.
About This Recording
The historic recordings in this album were made available
by generous consent of Mr. Ira Gershwin. From his personal
collection Mr. Gershwin loaned multiple vault copies of
the Gershwin Memorial Concert which he had preserved on
custom recorded, sixteen-inch discs. Modern equalization
and mastering techniques have been applied to improve the
sound as much as possible, but the high surface noise is
inherent in the original 1937 recordings.
Produced for Citadel Records by Michael Feinstein
Executive Producers: Tom Null and Chris Kuchler
Production
Coordination: Scot W. Holton and John Sievers
Mastering
Engineer and Disc-to-Tape Transfer: Bruce Leek, I.A.M.
Plating:
Rick Goldman, KM Matrix
Manufactured at KM Records
KM
Production Coordination: Mike Malan and Karen Stone
Also available on Citadel Records: Gershwin Rarities
– Songs from motion pictures and Broadway shows
featuring Kay Ballard and Nancy Walker (Citadel CT
7017)
