Concert Review: The BPO’s 'Gershwin & Resphigi'
Three Pieces From 100 Years Ago And Joyce Yang Breaks In A New Steinway
Author’s Note: This review was originally published on October 11, 2024 in the Buffalo Hive where I serve as Managing Editor.
At its first “Coffee Concert” of the season, Music Director JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra performed three distinct, early modern compositions, each about a century old.
The BPO also debuted its new Steinway piano in an extraordinary performance by guest pianist Joyce Yang, who brought the audience at Kleinhans to its feet following Gershwin’s Concerto in F Major for Piano and Orchestra.
Jazz Was Not “Serious” Music in 1924
While marijuana had been a key ingredient in the patent medicines of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, its increasing use by African Americans and Mexican immigrants following the 1910 Mexican Revolution resulted in its criminalization in 1937.
In 1924, jazz was not “serious” music and was associated with disreputable, cannabis-using jazz musicians, and other “muggle (marijuana) smokers.” The video clip below, while satire, is not far off from the racist, fearmongering campaign against jazz as gateway to marijuana, miscegenation, and the devil.
Despite its disreputable status among the musical establishment, George Gershwin regarded jazz as “serious music” and sought to bridge the jazz and classical worlds. Paul Whiteman, one of the most popular bandleaders in the United States, was determined to help.
An Educational Concert
Whiteman organized an “educational concert,” in February 1924 at the Aeolian Concert Hall in New York City, a center of American “serious music.” He gave it the provocative title, “An Experiment in Modern Music” intending “to show these skeptical people the advance which had been made in popular music from the day of the discordant early jazz to the melodious form of the present.”
When Gershwin’s debuted “Rhapsody in Blue” at Aeolian Hall, the capacity audience included Sergei Rachmaninov, John Philip Sousa, and Leopold Stokowski. “Rhapsody in Blue,” with its iconic clarinet opening, was a surprising success and helped create a new, Modern era in symphonic music.
One of those present in Aeolian Hall that night was New York Symphony Orchestra conductor and composer Walter Damrosch (The New York Symphony was founded in 1878 by the New York Symphony Society and is not to be confused with the more prestigious Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York, founded in 1842 and supported by Andrew Carnegie who erected his famous concert hall in 1891).
The day after the “educational concert,” Damrosch commissioned Gershwin to compose a full-scale piano concerto for the New York Symphony Orchestra, closer in form to a traditional, classical concerto but which incorporated Rhapsody in Blue’s jazz forms.
The Chautauqua Institution
Gershwin had many other obligations on his time, however, and didn’t begin his “New York Concerto” until Summer 1925. Indeed, the “Concerto in F major for Piano and Orchestra” was completed only after Gershwin isolated himself in one of the Institution’s 44 “practice shacks” (above) and was able to devote himself exclusively to its completion in November 1925.
Joyce Yang
It can sometimes be a problem when classical musicians perform Gershwin, or any jazz-tinged composition, really. As we live in a world of musical tribalism, some classical musicians are so “serious” that they cannot summon the requisite “jazz vibe” when necessary.
This was not a problem for Joyce Yang. She was clearly enjoying herself as she laid down the funk on the new Steinway in the blues and ragtime melodies Gershwin inserted into the traditional three movement (fast-slow-fast) concerto form.
The orchestra’s opening theme features the pulsating rhythm from “The Charleston” (dotted quarter note + eight note), creating a jazz foundation supporting a lush orchestral score. The bassoon introduced the theme, answered by the piano’s sparkling cadenzas and octave runs.
The second movement is introduced by a sad French Horn, followed by a sad clarinet trio, and a sad trumpet. Gershwin wrote pure blues, but placed it within the context of a symphonic dialogue, adding complexity and nuance. The piano offers the first sign of hope, with a jaunty tune joined by flutes and strings, leading to a rousing brass fanfare and a fading piano blues denouement.
The final movement recalls the orchestra’s theme from the first movement in a fast-paced rondo and the piano answers with a “rat-a-tat-tat” figure. Themes, melodies, and counter-melodies are developed in a wild steeplechase of tympani and sweeping strings, ending in a flurry of keyboard pyrotechnics.
After the applause died down, Yang performed Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” as an encore. Click below for a 2014 performance at the University of Washington.
The BPO’s New Steinway
In an interview following the concert, Yang complimented the BPO’s new instrument, saying that it allowed her to create the “smoky, bluesy quality” Gershwin’s concerto requires.
She praised the instrument’s bright, sustained tone which allowed Gershwin’s piano score to “cut through” the lush orchestration. Yang explained, “some pianos are ‘soggy’ and the melody sinks. The new Steinway ‘sings’ and doesn’t run out of breath when the melody needs to be sustained. It dances without gravity.”
Resphigi
The BPO’s concert program quite correctly notes that “Gregorian chant was developed in the ninth century by The Roman Catholic Church in an effort to standardize liturgical practices, leading to the development of a system of notation that it is a direct ancestor of modern notation.”
It is also true that Gregorian chant was audible prayer. The utterance of sacred sounds is found in all the great world religions: Muslims pray aloud five times a day, Buddhist and Hindu traditions have mantras, and devout Christians chant the rosary.
Respighi’s “Vetrate di chiesa” (Church Windows) (1926) was inspired by this notion of sacred sound; the “Church Windows” title and assignment of programmatic, Biblical episodes (flight into Egypt, heavenly war, Saint Clare) were added after the music was completed.
The BPO artfully conveyed the sacred themes with well-executed dynamics, sweet melodies, and an organ interlude.
Ibert
The concert began with Jacques Ibert’s “Escales” (Ports of Call), three tone poems based on Mediterranean poets of call, “Rome-Palermo,” “Tunis,” and “Valencia.”
“Rome-Valencia” began with a low hum of strings followed by a floating flute; the two harps added a magical quality. Oboe Principal Henry Ward managed a note-perfect performance during the complex modal melodies of “Tunis” and the piece ended with "Valencia," and a dramatic whirling dance.
The BPO’s second performance of the season finds them in good form. They are tuned in, well-rehearsed, and developing their own sophisticated sound.
Joyce Yang and the BPO repeat the program at 2:30PM on Sunday, October 13th, Kleinhans Music Hall. You can find more information here.