Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture
George Gershwin (1898-1937) / Arr. Robert Russell Bennett

[1935; arr. 1942]

George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which had its premiere in 1935, stands as a landmark in American music. Set in the fictional Catfish Row, a Black community in Charleston, South Carolina, the opera blends classical structure with jazz, blues, and spirituals to tell a story of love, loss, and resilience. Gershwin called it a “folk opera,” though its scope and ambition far exceed that modest label.

In 1942, conductor Fritz Reiner commissioned Gershwin’s friend and Broadway orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett to create a concert suite from the opera. The result was Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture, a 20-minute orchestral arrangement that distills the opera’s most iconic moments into a single, continuous work. Familiar melodies such as “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” are woven together with dramatic interludes and Bennett’s signature flair.

The suite plays like a film score in fast-forward—fluid, vivid, and emotionally charged. Bennett’s orchestration moves seamlessly through scenes of lullaby, storm, street bustle, and celebration, capturing the opera’s full dramatic arc. Familiar melodies emerge organically from the texture, not as standalone hits but as part of a larger narrative. The result is a musical panorama of Porgy and Bess, where Gershwin’s fusion of jazz and classical idioms feels both theatrical and symphonic, intimate and grand.

Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, tenor saxophone, two alto saxophones, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings