{"id":947,"date":"2018-02-19T00:55:46","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T05:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=947"},"modified":"2018-02-19T00:55:46","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T05:55:46","slug":"the-gershwin-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2018\/02\/the-gershwin-moment.html","title":{"rendered":"The Gershwin Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Some months ago I received an email from an exemplar of inquisitive musicianship: the pianist Kirill Gerstein, whom I had never met. (We mutually know a peerless Hungarian musical pedagogue: Ferenc Rados.)<\/p>\n

Gerstein had recorded a Gershwin album and wanted to know if I were interested in writing a note for it.<\/p>\n

I was more than interested. Not only do I believe in George Gershwin; I believe we are embarking on a Gershwin Moment.<\/a><\/p>\n

That is: modernism has departed, and so (sooner or later) will the Standard Narrative for American classical music that we learned from Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Leonard Bernstein. The Standard Narrative penalized both Gershwin and Charles Ives as gifted dilettantes. Roy Harris was the \u201cgreat white hope.\u201d No one today would put Harris ahead of Gershwin or Ives.<\/p>\n

Commensurate with the Gershwin Moment is the demise of the high\/low bifurcation of American music, which after World War I insured that American classical music would stay white. Gerstein is a classical pianist with a jazz degree (from the Berklee College of Music). Like Gershwin, he doesn\u2019t bifurcate. In fact, his new recorded performances<\/a> of Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F abound with flourishes of clairvoyant improvisation.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a teaser<\/a>. And here (below) is my album note:<\/p>\n

KIRILL GERSTEIN and the GERSHWIN MOMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historically, the concert music of George Gershwin has more impressed foreign-born than American-born classical musicians. And outsiders to the American experience, generally, have appreciated aspects of American music more taken for granted at home. The classic instance is Antonin Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, who resided in New York City and Iowa between 1892 to 1895. The most famous and controversial of all his recorded utterances, reported in the New York Herald<\/em>, prophesied that \u201cthe future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies.\u201d The spirituals of the American South had struck Dvo\u0159\u00e1k as an epiphany, \u201cmusic that suits itself to any mood or purpose.\u201d If Brahms had quoted Hungarian dance tunes, if Dvo\u0159\u00e1k himself drew instruction from Bohemian song and dance, American composers could fashion \u201ca great and noble school of music\u201d by mining the African-American motherlode.<\/p>\n

So steeped in plantation song is the plaintive Largo of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s New World <\/em>Symphony that it was turned into a beloved synthetic spiritual: \u201cGoin\u2019 Home.\u201d Much less famous is the American Suite <\/em>Dvo\u0159\u00e1k composed a year later, in 1894; comprising a series of New World snapshots, it marks a further, ingenious appropriation of minstrel and plantation song. This was also the year of the G-flat Humoresque \u2013 music so \u201cAmerican\u201d most Americans assume an American wrote it. Another Dvo\u0159\u00e1k Humoresque, in F major, begins with a bluesy tune Gershwin might have composed three decades later. Serendipitously, it was the G-flat Humoresque, wafting down from Maxie Rosenzweig\u2019s Brooklyn flat, that first inspired Gershwin to become a composer.<\/p>\n

The immediate influence of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s prophecy was great. It was a former Dvo\u0159\u00e1k student, William Arms Fisher, who turned the Largo into \u201cGoin’ Home.\u201d Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s New York amanuensis, Harry Burleigh, transformed \u201cDeep River\u201d into a grave concert song sung the world over by Marian Anderson and Paul Robe son. Via the machinations of Burleigh and Fisher, the once celebrated black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor also signed onto Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s project.<\/p>\n

But Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s New World aspirations did not resonate with the American modernists who came next. They favored a shiny new aesthetic purged of the past. Dvo\u0159\u00e1k had written of \u201cNegro melodies\u201d: \u201cthey are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay or what you will.\u201d Aaron Copland disagreed; \u201cFrom the composer\u2019s viewpoint,\u201d he wrote, jazz had \u201conly two expressions: the well-known \u2018blues\u2019 mood, and the wild, abandoned, almost hysterical and grotesque mood so dear to the youth of all ages.\u201d \u201cAny serious composer,\u201d he added, would quickly become aware of these \u201csevere limitations.\u201d Of \u201cMr. Gershwin\u2019s jazz,\u201d Copland said: \u201cGershwin is serious up to a point. My idea was to intensify [jazz] . . . to use it cubistically \u2013 to make it more exciting than ordinary jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, during his short lifetime, George Gershwin \u2014 heir to Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s prophecy \u2014 was a shunned outsider to American classical music. The influential American music narratives written by Copland and Virgil Thomson simply omitted him. America\u2019s leading journalistic apostle of musical modernism, Paul Rosenfeld, rebuked him as a dilettante. Who today would endorse Rosenfeld\u2019s insistence that Copland\u2019s jazz-influenced Piano Concerto of 1927 was an improvement on Gershwin\u2019s \u201chash derivative,\u201d that Gershwin disclosed \u201ca weakness of spirit, possibly as a consequence that the new world attracted the less stable types\u201d?<\/p>\n

The Gershwin threat, and the jazz threat of which it was a part, were symptoms of a youthful musical high culture borrowed from Europe \u2013 and hence obsessed with pedigree. With the singular exception of the New York Philharmonic, American orchestras for decades segregated the Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>, the Concerto in F<\/em>, and An American in Paris <\/em>as \u201cpops\u201d fare. The Boston Symphony first gave these works on subscription in 1997, 2005, and 2005, respectively. The Chicago Symphony waited until 2000 for all three. The Metropolitan Opera first gave Porgy and Bess <\/em>in 1985.<\/p>\n

It was of course in the realm of popular music that Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s prophecy came true. More than in Europe, American music after World War I was bifurcated between classical and popular \u2013 a bifurcation that was also, to a degree remarkable and disturbing, a split between white and black. The Oklahoma-born Roy Harris was even called a \u201cwhite hope\u201d in the unfulfilled interwar quest for the Great American Symphony. In retrospect, what American music needed was not another Copland or Harris, but a mighty interloper to rescue American classical music from itself. But George Gershwin died at the age of 38 in 1937.<\/p>\n

Olin Downes summarized in The New York Times<\/em>: \u201cHis value may have been exaggerated… He never passed a certain point as a \u2018serious\u2019 composer.\u201d As ever, America\u2019s European-born conductors, composers, and instrumentalists thought differently. Otto Klemperer led his own, dirge-like transcription of Gershwin\u2019s Second Prelude <\/em>at the Hollywood Bowl Gershwin Memorial Concert. Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg eulogized Gershwin as \u201ca great composer.\u201d Jascha Heifetz, who had hoped for a Gershwin Violin Concerto, said: \u201cWe should be ashamed that we did not appreciate this man more when he was in our midst.\u201d Other Europeans speaking up for Gershwin included Maurice Ravel and Dmitri Shostakovich \u2013 composers of great reputation with nothing to lose.<\/p>\n

As a student at the Special Music School for gifted children in Voronezh, Russia, Kirill Gerstein was from a very early age infatuated with jazz, which he knew from his parents\u2019 extensive record collection. At fourteen, he met Gary Burton in St. Petersburg, leading to a scholarship to study jazz piano at Boston\u2019s Berklee College of Music. \u201cA famous American piano pedagogue said to me, \u2018Berklee??? <\/em>And what would you be studying there?\u2019 When I meekly answered \u2018Jazz,\u2019 he looked away and said, \u2018I have no further questions.\u2019\u201d Gerstein adds: \u201cAt that time, Berklee was mainly non-classical. But in fact, some of the best classical analysis courses I\u2019ve ever had were at Berklee. And now they\u2019ve merged with the Boston Conservatory. They offer a comprehensive unified curriculum \u2013 from classical to jazz, Baroque to bluegrass, film music to hip-hop. Which bodes well for music education that\u2019s stylistically fluid and unconstrained by artificial barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berklee could only have fortified Gerstein\u2019s mission to pursue a classical music career that would integrate his passion for spontaneous musical expression. When he performs the Schumann Piano Concerto, he does not improvise. But his reading bristles with spur-of-the-moment inspiration: a piquant voicing, a rhythmic eruption. Sonically, he works in shifting watercolors versus solidified oils. It is Gershwin\u2019s Concerto in F<\/em>, however, that becomes a full-scale playground for Gerstein\u2019s dual schooling.<\/p>\n

In fact, Gershwin\u2019s legacy seems more protean than ever. No one any longer questions his pedigree. And he remains a singularly malleable and promiscuous stylist. With the exception of J. S. Bach, no other concert composer produced music susceptible to such a bewildering range of readings. Gershwin himself, overseeing the premiere of Porgy and Bes<\/em>s, made it very clear that John Bubbles could sing \u201cIt Ain\u2019t Necessarily So\u201d in his way; there was no \u201cGershwin way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The music on the present Gerstein disc is a further case in point. There does not even exist a remotely definitive edition of the Rhapsody in Blue <\/em>\u2013 its instrumentation, its duration remain variable. There are two orchestrations, both by Ferde Grof\u00e9 \u2013 one for the Paul Whiteman Band, the other for symphony orchestra (Gershwin afterward did his own orchestrating). Gershwin\u2019s own two recordings, with different musical contents, are lean and driving. Oscar Levant, the pianist most closely associated with Gershwin, adopted meatier sonorities. Leonard Bernstein\u2019s well-known reading proposed a Slavic expansiveness. It bears mentioning that Rhapsody in Blue <\/em>was a 1930s sensation in Soviet Russia, and that its big tune strikingly resembles the \u201clove theme\u201d from Tchaikovsky\u2019s Romeo and Juliet<\/em>. The Concerto in F<\/em>, historically, has been a specialty of French pianists.<\/p>\n

All these artists, Gershwin included, played Gershwin by the book. Gerstein does not. He adds embellishments of many kinds. For the Concerto\u2019s slow movement, he interpolates a cadenza. I asked him about all this. He said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe performances on the CD are culled from four consecutive concerts in St. Louis \u2013 and what I played was different every time. My intention is to strike a delicate balance \u2013 not too classical, not too jazzy. The jazzing up of Gershwin can easily be overdone. I think there is a fine proportion that\u2019s implicit. As for the pieces themselves, I think they\u2019re more masterly than is often perceived. In the Concerto in F<\/em>, the orchestration is Stravinsky-like in its precision and transparency. This is often overlooked. And it\u2019s even more the case for Rhapsody in Blue <\/em>in the Whiteman band version that we\u2019ve used \u2013 it\u2019s chamber music. The more time you invest in rehearsal and refinement, the more impressive these masterpieces appear. I\u2019ve played Rhapsody in Blue <\/em>since maybe 2006. It took me some time to find my way \u2013 it\u2019s such a volatile stylistic blend, second by second.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are moments where he\u2019s alluding to jazz and interrupts to say: \u2019I know Rachmaninoff, I can do that. I can do Tchaikovsky, no problem.\u2019 It\u2019s a piece that\u2019s naturally playful. The Concerto in F <\/em>I first played in 2012. Since then, the improvised interpolations have expanded a bit. I\u2019m not trying for \u2018historical accuracy\u2019 in interpretation. Here I\u2019m simply responding to the stylistic threads.\u201d<\/p>\n

In sum: Gershwin was a premature harbinger of musical synergies we now take for granted. And American music is today verging on a Gershwin Moment long overdue. In thr world of American musicology, music historians are suddenly flocking to Gershwin in droves; a Gershwin critical edition was initiated in 2013 at the University of Michigan. In the world of American orchestras and opera companies, Gershwin is at long last a ubiquitous mainstream participant. A mere decade before Kirill Gerstein arrived in Boston, fledgling virtuosos were typically counselled not to acquire the Gershwin concerto lest it tarnish their image. No young pianist would today be so advised.<\/p>\n

If the old Gershwin was an inspired dilettante, the new Gershwin is versatile, protean, universal. The old Gershwin was impure, in limbo, betwixt and between. The new Gershwin is wholesome, ecumenical. For Kirill Gerstein \u2013 a voracious learner \u2014 Gershwin is both a fulfillment and a beginning. What about those Dvo\u0159\u00e1k Humoresques? Stay tuned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Some months ago I received an email from an exemplar of inquisitive musicianship: the pianist Kirill Gerstein, whom I had never met. (We mutually know a peerless Hungarian musical pedagogue: Ferenc Rados.) Gerstein had recorded a Gershwin album and wanted to know if I were interested in writing a note for it. I was more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-fh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}