George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, NY on September 26, 1898 and died in Hollywood, CA on July 11, 1937. While his career began as a song plugger in New York City’s Tin Pan Alley, he went on to great success on Broadway in the concert hall. His most important stage work was the opera, Porgy and Bess, which remains in the repertory of opera companies and which enjoys occasional revivals on Broadway. In 1942, at the request of Fritz Reiner, then the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Gershwin’s colleague, Robet Russell Bennett created this concert piece. The arranger stayed as close as possible to Gershwin’s original orchestration, which calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 alto saxophones, tenor saxophone, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, banjo, 2 harps, and strings.
The tradition of taking music written for the stage and arranging it for performance in the concert hall dates back at least until the 18th century. Often composers themselves would make these arrangements. One recent such example is Matthew Aucoin’s Suite derived from his opera, Eurydice. Richard Wagner, in the 19th century made arrangements of musical excerpts from his Ring of the Nibelung cycle (such as we heard earlier in this CSO season). In the case of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Robert Russell Bennett, who served as an assistant to the composer was pressed into service.
Interestingly, the length of the arrangement—24 minutes—was designed in order to fit precisely onto three 78-rpm records. The order of tunes from Porgy and Bess do not appear in their original order. According to Bennett’s own program notes for the 1943 premiere in Pittsburgh, the order is:
Program Note by David B. Levy, © 2025