Gershwin in Our Hearts
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Gershwin would have been 106 years old today. Can you believe it!? But he never dies in our hearts or musical memories. Let’s take a listen...
Sharon Isbin plays the Piano Prelude No. 1, but in her own inimitable style in a Barbosa-Lima arrangement for guitar. Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman is featured in the “Promenade,” a.k.a “Walking the Dog,” and the Tashi ensemble gives us ‘Liza’ from “Show Girl.” Of course, we have to revisit “Porgy and Bess,” so some time later we listen to highlights brought to us by the New York Philharmonic and various soloists under Zubin Mehta.
The Cleveland Orchestra prances through “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” under the baton of Lorin Maazel, and Lowell Greer plays a natural horn in a period-instruments rendition of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 2, Nicholas McGegan conducting the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
“Somebody Loves Me” opens hour three, Judy Blazer singing a Gershwin fave, before we hear the last major work of the evening, Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, Kurt Masur leading the New York Philharmonic. Brahms said of this work: “Whether or not I have a pretty symphony I do not know; I will have to ask some wiser people.” This genial, sunny work has been an audience pleaser from its first performance, reminding many of Beethoven’s “Pastoral,” and proving that the second of the “Three Bs,” grand old Ludwig, had not written the last symphonic word after all.
Sharon Isbin plays the Piano Prelude No. 1, but in her own inimitable style in a Barbosa-Lima arrangement for guitar. Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman is featured in the “Promenade,” a.k.a “Walking the Dog,” and the Tashi ensemble gives us ‘Liza’ from “Show Girl.” Of course, we have to revisit “Porgy and Bess,” so some time later we listen to highlights brought to us by the New York Philharmonic and various soloists under Zubin Mehta.
The Cleveland Orchestra prances through “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” under the baton of Lorin Maazel, and Lowell Greer plays a natural horn in a period-instruments rendition of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 2, Nicholas McGegan conducting the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
“Somebody Loves Me” opens hour three, Judy Blazer singing a Gershwin fave, before we hear the last major work of the evening, Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, Kurt Masur leading the New York Philharmonic. Brahms said of this work: “Whether or not I have a pretty symphony I do not know; I will have to ask some wiser people.” This genial, sunny work has been an audience pleaser from its first performance, reminding many of Beethoven’s “Pastoral,” and proving that the second of the “Three Bs,” grand old Ludwig, had not written the last symphonic word after all.
