1/5/2024 0 Comments George gershwin compositions![]() George took Ira’s spot as the would-be piano prodigy. The family didn’t know until then that George had been teaching himself piano at a neighbour’s house. ‘I remember being particularly impressed by his swinging left hand and by harmonic and rhythmic effects I thought as proficient as those of most of the pianists I’d heard in vaudeville,’ said Ira. ![]() Imagine the family’s surprise one day when the feckless George, age 12, sat down at the piano and played a popular song. He later cited two key experiences that turned him towards music: age six, hearing Rubinstein’s Melody in F played on a pianola, and age ten, listening to a young violinist his own age play Dvořák's Humoresque (‘it was a flashing revelation of beauty’). © Lebrecht Music & Artsīut George had a musical spark that was just waiting to be lit. Meanwhile, the bookish Ira unenthusiastically took piano lessons from their Aunt Kate. The young George was a street-wise kid, running around his neighbourhood on the Lower East Side and getting into scrapes. (The parents of Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein were also Russian Jews – it’s been said that Tsar Alexander III could be credited for the thriving Broadway music scene of the 20th century.) George was two years younger than the oldest child, Ira, whose mild-mannered personality would prove to be the perfect counterbalance to George’s extrovert manner. George Gershwin was born in New York in 1898 to Rose and Morris Gershvin, Jewish immigrants from Russia fleeing the pogroms and the persecution. His life was short – he was 38 when he died – but in that brief time he accomplished so much, writing songs that are now standards and concert pieces that narrowed the gap, once thought unbridgeable, between classical and jazz. Gershwin wrote that American music ‘must express the feverish tempo of American life… In our music we must be able to catch a glimpse of our skyscrapers, to feel that overwhelming burst of energy which is bottled in our life, to hear that chaos of noises which suffuses the air of our modern American city.’ His songs andĬoncert works conjure up Art Deco Hollywood and bustling New York, call to mind the Roaring Twenties and the in-need-of-cheer Thirties, and incorporate the music of African-Americans and of European immigrants to the great American cities. In the beginning of 1937, Gershwin began to experience troubling symptoms such as severe headaches and noticing strange smells.Main image: © Carl Van Vechten Photographs collection at the Library of Congressįrom Rhapsody in Blue to Porgy and Bess, from ‘Swanee’ to ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off ’, George Gershwin’s music uniquely evokes the energy and optimism of the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. It was while working on a follow-up film with Astaire that Gershwin’s life would come to an abrupt end. ![]() Gershwin called it his “folk opera,” and it is considered to not only be Gershwin’s most complex and best-known works, but also among the most important American musical compositions of the 20th century.įollowing his success with “Porgy and Bess,” Gershwin moved to Hollywood and was hired to compose the music for a film titled “Shall We Dance,” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. ![]() In 1935, a decade after composing “Rhapsody in Blue,” Gershwin debuted his most ambitious composition, “Porgy and Bess.” The composition, which was based on the novel “Porgy” by Dubose Heyward, drew from both popular and classical influences. A Broadway musical based on the film opened in 2014. Composed in 1928, An American in Paris inspired the 1951 Oscar-winning movie musical by the same name, which was directed by Vincente Minnelli and starred Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. In the 1920s, Gershwin spent time in Paris, which inspired his jazz-influenced orchestral composition An American in Paris.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |