Marshall: Gershwin and Bernstein (O)
Marshall: Gershwin and Bernstein (O)
Wayne Marshall, a highly versatile British musician, is internationally renowned both as a conductor and an artist at the keys of the piano or organ. Audiences in Prague surely remember his excellent concert performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in one of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra’s seasons. Now he returns with Bernstein’s 1944 symphony based on Old Testament themes, and more of George Gershwin’s music. Gershwin was the first composer to truly and brilliantly blend African-American music with European opera – in fact, exactly as Antonín Dvořák had predicted in 1892 when he was teaching in New York, only a quarter of a century after the abolition of slavery in the USA, that Black melodies and songs should primarily form the basis of an original American school of composition, if one was to be established. Gershwin released his first hit at the age of eighteen and just three years later his first full-length comedy was being performed on Broadway. In 1924, he broke into the concert scene in full force with his Rhapsody in Blue, which unexpectedly opened up the possibilities of combining two worlds with its use of elements of jazz and classical music. Gershwin intended to continue combining the new intonations and rhythms of Black jazz with the world of classical music. Although pieces such as the Piano Concerto, the Second Rhapsody and the Cuban Overture were successful, they could never surpass the success of Rhapsody in Blue. Nor could the jazz-influenced symphonic poem An American in Paris, using an orchestra with celesta, saxophones and car horns. *Programme:* - George Gershwin: Second Rhapsody, 15 min. - George Gershwin: An American in Paris, 16 min. - Leonard Bernstein: Symphony No. 1 “Jeremiah”, 25 min.
