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

[1935]

Broadway (and, later, Hollywood) made Gershwin rich and famous, but he still aspired to create serious concert music. His early efforts could hardly have been more successful—they included Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928). Eventually he set his sights on the loftiest realm of all: grand opera.

Once he decided to adapt DuBose Heyward’s novella Porgy, Gershwin spent a summer on the barrier islands near Charleston, South Carolina, to soak up the distinctive Gullah culture in those isolated communities where descendants of enslaved people had preserved traditions with unbroken links back to West Africa. Using a libretto that Heyward and his wife Dorothy adapted from their stage play version, plus additional lyrics from his brother and songwriting partner, Ira, Gershwin composed Porgy and Bess for an all-Black cast that premiered the opera on Broadway in 1935. It turned out to be Gershwin’s last major work of “serious” music; he died from brain cancer two years later, at the age of 38, while working on a movie musical in Hollywood.

In 1942, when the conductor and former Gershwin collaborator Fritz Reiner wanted a concert suite from Porgy and Bess for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, he commissioned Gershwin’s friend and colleague Robert Russell Bennett. This “Symphonic Picture” features many of the opera’s most recognizable tunes, including “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and of course “Summertime,” which has crossed over from its origins as a sweetly sad and consoling aria to become an essential standard in the Great American Songbook.

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