NSO@Wolf Trap: Hamlisch Goes Gershwin

This post is from NSO@Wolf Trap Festival Conductor Emil de Cou.

Born in New York... a child prodigy on the piano... paid the bills writing arrangements... distinguished composer for Broadway and Hollywood...

Marvin? George? Marvin? George?

Tonight we are privileged to have both, as the NSO's great friend Marvin Hamlisch leads a tribute to George Gershwin. Kindred spirits in mining and mingling American genres (Gershwin brought jazz to the concert hall, Hamlisch brought ragtime to the movies), they each cut their teeth behind the scenes as well, each consummate musicians who came up through the ranks. Gershwin was a song plugger who churned out piano rolls. Hamlisch got his start as a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand.

Tonight's program features works by some of the most distinguished arrangers of their time: Ferde Grofe, Robert Russell Bennett, Torrie Zito, Hilding Anderson, and Robert McBride. Each had distinguished careers on Broadway, in Hollywood, on the road, and in recording studios. Whether they honed their skills on Tin Pan Alley or at Juilliard, they were highly esteemed by the composers whose works they brought to life.

Among those composers who owe them a debt of gratitude is George Gershwin. A prolific arranger and orchestrator in his early years, he readily collaborated with muscians whose skills complemented his. There are some who argue that composers who delegate or collaborate with arrangers or orchestrators are somehow lesser deities. Especially in the case of musical theatre, the dominant genre of Gershwin's career, the time demands alone would crush any composer who tried to go it alone. Song are dropped and added in rehearsal and on the road, recitative needs underscoring, the star demands a key change. As for scoring, recording, and conducting film music, well, it takes an entire music department to bring the composer's ideas to fruition.

This is not to say that the arranger dilutes the composer's intentions. On the contrary, the very best arrangers take the composer's "short score," with its melody, harmony, rhythm, and suggestions for instrumentation, and enhance those intentions with sympathetic orchestrations. Ferde Grofe (1892-1972) is most famous as a composer for his Grand Canyon Suite (which we'll be performing in two weeks at our The Planets- An HD Odyssey concert), but his legacy shines further in his arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which Grofe adapted from a two-piano work into a jazz orchestra classic for the Paul Whitman Orchestra. The Grofe arrangement established Gershwin's career and helped define the jazzy-classical sound we associate with the composer. Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981) created orchestrations for the giant of film and theatre: Berlin, Kern, Rodgers, porter, Lowe, and Styne. He worked on numerous shows with Gershwin and was his devoted assistant on his 1937 film Shall We Dance. At that time, Gershwin was already suffering from the brain surgery that would ultimately take his life at age 39.

As you listen to each work tonight you might hear some subtleties that reflects the talents of the arrangers, but for the most part their contributions- if executed properly- are invisible except to the most finely tune ears. The polished sound you hear may well be the product of the pens of two men, but the spirit that invades you is the composer's gift alone. A Gershwin song by any arrangement sounds just as 's wonderful. 

Hamlisch Goes Gershwin

Friday, July 13, 2012 at 8:15 pm

Marvin Hamlisch, conductor

Melissa Errico, vocalist

Kevin Cole, piano

Selections from Porgy and Bess

Swanee

Rhapsody in Blue

Gershwin in Hollywood

"Someone to Watch Over Me" from Oh, Kay

"Embraceable You" from Girl Crazy

"By Strauss" from The Show is On

Overture to Of Thee I Sing

An American in Paris