Chattanooga Symphony & Opera - Opening Night: La Mer - Copy

Piano Concerto in F Major

George Gershwin

Piano Concerto in F Major
George Gershwin
(b. September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York; d. July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California)

A syncopated Charleston rhythm erupts from the percussion, a bluesy trumpet wails, and the piano enters with all the swagger of a Broadway star taking the stage at Carnegie Hall. This is George Gershwin’s Concerto in F, his ambitious answer to the question of whether a Tin Pan Alley genius could conquer the classical concert hall. More than just a successor to Rhapsody in Blue, the Concerto is a powerful, authentically American work that proved his genius needed no translation.

Gershwin had a serendipitous rise to fame. The piano he learned to play on was bought for his older brother Ira who was comparatively uninterested in it, so George got to use it the most. His younger sister Frankie was the first in the family to bring home money from performing. George, however, was paying strict attention. He was the one whose ambition was unquenchable and whose genius was unmistakable.

On his birth certificate George Gershwin is Jacob Gershwine. His father came to America as Moishe Gershowitz but received typical Ellis Island treatment immediately becoming Morris Gershwine. Rumors that -win was taken from comedian Ed Wynn are false. Jacob started to go by George as a young boy and dropped the e from Gershwine when he was about 15 and began working as a song plugger (a pianist who could promote sheet music sales) on Tin Pan Alley. His Tin Pan Alley connection was all the opportunity he needed.

Conductor Walter Damrosch was at Rhapsody in Blue's premiere in 1924 and was so impressed that the next day he commissioned Gershwin to write another work for piano and orchestra—what would become Concerto in F. Damrosch conducted the premiere with the New York Symphony Orchestra, the composer at the piano, December 3rd, 1925.

Three percussionists much in evidence from the opening bars, the timpani start a noisy fragment that reappears throughout the work. The whole first section is expectant: It is the soloist we are waiting for, brooding and jazzy, with an important new melody. Moments of broad grandeur and playfulness unfold with much virtuoso piano playing. The full orchestra brings back the piano's opening melody with great passion and intensity, a brief lull, the timpani again, and a race to the finish.

The second movement is very bluesy, the trumpet leading off. The piano picks up the pace and the movement slowly builds until the opening blues theme returns, this time with muted trumpet and piano commentary. A climactic ending seems to be developing when the music stops; the soloist gently reenters with sparse accompaniment and the movement ends intimately.

The finale is filled with relentless energy. Far shorter than either other movement, its moments of repose are correspondingly brief. A reappearance of the second movement blues, a direct quotation of the grand moment near the end of the first movement, and—this last time—the timpani cue an incandescent finish.

Starting in 1916 Gershwin wrote many songs that made it to Broadway. His breakout hit was “Swanee” in 1919, made nationally famous by Al Jolson and he was off and running. Soaring financial success on Broadway was so easy for him, he felt he wasn’t being the “serious” composer he was meant to be. He worked hard to address what he saw as his shortcomings. Despite the success of Rhapsody in Blue he sought instruction from many icons of the era. All declined. The extraordinary Nadia Boulanger (sister of Lili, second on tonight’s program), refused him fearing she could only damage his natural understanding of jazz. Maurice Ravel summed it up best by asking, “Why be a second-rate Ravel, when you are a first-rate Gershwin?”

Gershwin, still seeing himself an undergraduate student of classical music, approached the commission like a final thesis, diving into books on theory and orchestration, finishing the three movements in July-September 1925 and the orchestration in November. Because Gershwin did not orchestrate Rhapsody in Blue (Ferde Grofé did), the premiere of Concerto in F was his graduation day.