{"id":162,"date":"2010-12-05T18:07:07","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T23:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano\/?p=162"},"modified":"2016-08-04T16:41:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T21:41:06","slug":"sunday-freestyle-playlist-gershwin-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano\/2010\/12\/05\/sunday-freestyle-playlist-gershwin-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday freestyle playlist: Gershwin returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was sixteen, I developed a fanatical devotion to the music of George Gershwin.\u00a0 I don’t even know how that happened\u2014it just did.\u00a0 I had an extensive record collection of his concert works and listened to them endlessly.\u00a0 I even had a full piano score for Porgy and Bess<\/em> (courtesy of my mother, who indulged all of my obsessions).\u00a0 I no doubt wore out my friends with my ceaseless raving about my favorite moments in An American in Paris<\/em>, the best parts of the full Porgy<\/em> (not just the hits you hear all the time), and so forth.<\/p>\n

I did actually play some of the music, although really not that much.\u00a0 I played the three Preludes<\/em>, I played songs from a song book I had, and, ultimately, I learned the last movement of the Concerto in f<\/em>.\u00a0 Somehow I never got around to learning the other two movements, even though the first movement was my favorite (as anyone in earshot of me at the time would know).<\/p>\n

The peak of my Gershwin craze came in the bicentennial summer of 1976, when I was a winner in the concerto competition at the Brevard Music Center summer camp.\u00a0\u00a0 I performed the last movement of the Concerto in f<\/em> with the student orchestra.\u00a0 My whole family came up to see it; it was a great night.<\/p>\n

After that, I moved on to more “adult” tastes:\u00a0 I became obsessed with Stravinsky first, and then, more famously, John Cage.\u00a0 By the time I was in my twenties I was embarrassed of my teen Gershwin interlude.\u00a0 I stopped listening to the records, put the scores away, and forgot all about Gershwin, except for the songs, which I continued to love.<\/p>\n

I tell all this because I found my Gershwin scores in the attic and spent the morning playing the Rhapsody in blue<\/em> and bits and pieces of the Concerto in f<\/em>.\u00a0 I guess I’m approaching what my father referred to as “the age of utter shamelessness” and I can look back at my teen love of this music without cringing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I still can’t hear these pieces without hearing them through that teen filter, without associating them with all the ups and downs of adolescence.\u00a0\u00a0 And truth to tell, the music sounds a bit like the work of raw youth even in itself (Gershwin was only 26 when he wrote the Rhapsody<\/em>, and was a ripe old 27 when he wrote the Concerto<\/em>).\u00a0 But there are some fun bits in there, and I enjoyed hitting all the climactic moments, including the big finish to the Concerto<\/em>.\u00a0 It was fun to see the notes in my teenage scrawl, reminding me to watch the conductor at key moments and not to take the ending too fast.<\/p>\n

Here’s the last movement of\u00a0the Concerto<\/em> in my 1976 Brevard performance with the Transylvania Symphony Orchestra, Henry Janiec conducting.\u00a0 Apologies for the audio quality:\u00a0 this is an MP3 of a bad dub of a cassette of an iffy recording, but it’s what I had.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano_media\/GershwinConcerto.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was sixteen, I was a Gershwin fanatic. I revisited some of that music today after a thirty-year-plus hiatus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me-and-my-piano","tag-gershwin"],"yoast_head":"\nSunday freestyle playlist: Gershwin returns - 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