Program Notes
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)
CUBAN OVERTURE
Duration: ca. 10 minutes
Had a brain tumor not cut short George Gershwin’s
vertical career at such a young age, the chapter on
classical music in America would have grown quickly into
a volume of its own. Gershwin was a man whose life and
work sparkled, who captured the infectious gaiety of his
time, and who wove the blues, jazz, and ragtime into the
rich and complex embroidery of the symphony orchestra.
His first hit, Swanee, made him famous – and wealthy – at
age 21, and from then on, he composed as if possessed.
The work on tonight’s program, the Cuban Overture, is a
musical postcard capturing Gershwin’s whirlwind twoweek
vacation in Havana, where he admitted to too
much booze and not enough sleep. He was fascinated by
the colorful street bands and their instruments: bongos,
claves, gourds, and maracas. “Cuba was most interesting
to me,’’ Gershwin wrote, “especially for its small dance
orchestras, who play the most intricate rhythms most
naturally.’’
Gershwin returned to New York along with a collection of
these instruments, and in the summer of 1932 finished the
10-minute score to Rumba, soon to be given a more fitting
title before a benefit concert at the Metropolitan Opera.
The Cuban Overture, as it was renamed, is cast in a
single movement with two fast outer sections serving as
bookends to a slow middle, marked to be played with
warmth and expressiveness. The music is full of sparkle
and rhythmic verve, which mask the intricate contrapuntal
technique Gershwin had been studying and proudly
employed in the opening section. Wanting to showcase
the original instruments he heard in Havana, Gershwin
insisted they be placed in front of the conductor’s podium,
treating them as soloists and delighting audiences lucky
enough to sit close to the stage.
EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)
PIANO CONCERTO IN A MINOR, OP. 16
Duration: ca. 30 minutes
Norway’s best-known composer, Edvard Grieg, was a shy,
inward-looking man inspired by the calm of the country,
away from the bustle and noise of his native Bergen. He
found solace in summer trips to a cottage near Copenhagen,
where he enjoyed some of his most fruitful days and
nights of composing. The country also suited his delicate
health – Grieg suffered from a pulmonary condition that
would kill him, in 1907, ending the career of a romanticist
with both feet firmly planted in 19th century tradition.
The least characteristic of all Grieg’s works is, ironically,
one of the most popular in the classical canon, the Piano
Concerto in A Minor. Unlike his more reticent pieces, the
concerto announces itself with an outburst of self-assurance,
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the opening rumble of timpani setting off an avalanche
of hearty melodies.
Similarities between this work and Schumann’s Piano Concerto
in A Major are no coincidence; in fact, the opening of
both works seems to be cast from the same die. Grieg fell
in love with the music after hearing it performed by Clara
Schumann at a concert in Leipzig. Afterward, in 1870, Grieg
met the great pianist Franz Liszt, who was impressed with
the younger composer’s First Violin Sonata. Grieg shared the
handwritten manuscript of his Piano Concerto, which Liszt
played by sight and offered advice on orchestration. Grieg
accepted some of his counsel, but never stopped dabbling:
From its inception in 1868 until the year of his death, Grieg
revised the work no less than eight times.
Today, the concerto remains at the heart of the repertoire
– with more than 100 recordings (including the first piano
concerto ever recorded, in 1909) – and its frothy opening passage
is one of the most recognizable in all of music. It may not
have the weight and seriousness of purpose of other famed
concertos, but it sticks to the ribs and has a sound all its own,
wrote Harold C. Schonberg in his book Lives of the Great Composers:
“Grieg never struck very deep and his range is narrow.
Grieg does not represent power or revolution. He represents
charm, grace, sweetness. He was a minor master, and one of
the finest.”
The concerto opens with a salvo: a timpani roll followed by
a series of descending octaves by the piano. From there,
Grieg condenses his material into a neatly packed development
section with not a wasted note. Near the end, the soloist
takes over with an impassioned cadenza. The adagio
requires an unerring delicacy from the soloist, free of showmanship,
and when done well, this lyric, plaintive movement
can mirror the middle section of a Mozart concerto.
The piece closes with a flourish, a fast-paced Norwegian
dance known as a halling, even if piano and orchestra are not
all that well integrated and Grieg comes up short in developing
his material. Most concertgoers could care less; they leave
the hall humming tunes all the way home.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
LEONORE OVERTURE NO. 3, OP. 72
Duration: ca. 14 minutes
No single work gave Beethoven more fits than his lone opera,
Fidelio, which he struggled with for a decade and wrote no
less than four overtures. “This opera will win for me a martyr’s
crown,’’ he once grumbled.
Beethoven’s angst has been attributed to his perfectionism
in setting to music his poetic ideal of freedom, as he would
do so magnificently in the Ninth Symphony. The opera, however,
ran into all sorts of artistic and production snags that
demanded revisions of the original overture to better suit his
largest score – or in the case of the Leonore Overture No. 3, to
not suit it at all.