Posted on by tjphilbrick

American in Paris

Hello all,

This week’s music is “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin.

George Gershwin is one of the household names of American classical music, but not in the same way as Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein. Instead, Gershwin is famous for blending jazz and classical into a unique style that, in many ways, came to define the roaring twenties.

“An American in Paris” was inspired by Gershwin’s 1926 trip to Paris and, in particular, the sound of taxi horns on the Paris boulevards. Gershwin called the piece a “rhapsodic ballet,” though it was not adapted for the ballet stage until Gene Kelly’s Academy Award-winning ballet arrangement in 1951. Gershwin offers the listener a kaleidoscope of musical impressions, starting with a light-hearted strolling melody that gets interrupted by a honking taxi horn. There is a busy street shopping escapade featuring the violins, then a bluesy melody in the woodwinds, followed by a sassy trumpet fanfare that overlays the original “taxi horn” motif. Listen for the violin and tuba solos near the end of the piece (a bizarre pairing only Gershwin could pull off) and the return of the original strolling melody (with a twist!) at the end.

Enjoy!

T

Posted on by tjphilbrick

American Composers #1 – Edward MacDowell

Hello all,

This week’s music begins a new series on American composers. To kick things off, we will be starting with Edward MacDowell’s Piano Concerto No. 2, performed by Andre Watts with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. (My apologies for the short excerpt video, it’s the only tolerably decent video I could find. Hopefully this piques your interest and inspires you to go listen to the concerto in full :).

MacDowell is one of the most celebrated composers in American history. A Renaissance man, he was also a talented poet, painter, forester, and architect. His compositions quickly gained international acclaim. He was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His second piano concerto is by far his most well-known work. MacDowell himself played the premiere of the concerto in 1894, and the performance was so successful that he was immediately hired to start the music department at Columbia University. However, university life was not for him, and he resigned soon after starting the program and returned to his farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire. There is now a world famous artist colony called the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough.

The second concerto begins with the dazzling runs and thundering chords you will hear in the video above. I had a chance to play in an orchestra during a performance of this concerto, and the adrenaline rush of these opening bars is like nothing else. Watts does a phenomenal job of creating two voices – one soft and hesitant, the other powerful and aggressive.

Enjoy!

T