Concerto in F (Gershwin)

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Concerto in F is a composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra which is closer in form to a traditional concerto than the earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue. It was written in 1925 on a commission from the conductor and director Walter Damrosch.

1 Genesis of the concerto
2 Form
3 Radio broadcast
4 Sources
5 References

[edit] Genesis of the concerto

Damrosch had been present at the February 12, 1924 concert arranged and conducted by Paul Whiteman at Aeolian Hall titled An Experiment in Modern Music which became famous for the premiere of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, for which the composer performed the piano solo. The day after the concert, Damrosch contacted Gershwin to commission from him a full-scale piano concerto for the New York Symphony Orchestra, closer in form to a classical concerto and orchestrated by the composer. Although Gershwin would later receive formal training and lessons from influential figures like Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger and Arnold Schoenberg in advanced composition, harmony and orchestration, in 1925 Gershwin, without such training and a deadline to complete the work, bought books on theory, concerto form and orchestration and taught himself the skills needed. Because of contractual obligations for three different Broadway musicals, he was not able to begin sketching ideas until May of 1925. He began the two-piano score on July 22 after returning from a trip to London, and the original drafts were entitled New York Concerto. The first movement was written in July, the second in August, and the third in September, much of the work being done in a practice shack at the Chautauqua Institution. Gershwin completed the full orchestrations on November 10 (this is supposedly the first work that he ever orchestrated).

Gershwin hired a 60-piece orchestra to run through his first draft in November of 1925. Damrosch attended and gave Gershwin advice, and he thereafter made a few cuts and revisions. The premiere performance was on 3 December 1925 in New York's Carnegie Hall by the New York Symphony Orchestra with Damrosch conducting (three years later the orchestra would merge with the Philharmonic Symphony Society into the now-famous New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and one of the new orchestra's first projects was the commission and December 1928 premiere of Gershwin's next symphonic work An American in Paris) and Gershwin playing the piano solo. The concert was sold out and the concerto was very well received by the general public. However, the reviews were mixed with many critics unable to classify it as jazz or classical. Indeed, there was a great variety of opinion among Gershwin's contemporaries; Igor Stravinsky thought the work was one of genius, whereas Sergei Prokofiev disliked it intensely.

The Concerto in F shows considerable development in Gershwin's compositional technique namely because he orchestrated the entire work himself, unlike the Rhapsody in Blue which was done by Ferde Grofé, the orchestrator for Paul Whiteman's orchestra. The English composer William Walton commented that he adored Gershwin's orchestration of the concerto, he himself being a famous orchestrator. Gershwin scored his concerto for 2 flutes and a piccolo, 2 oboes and an English horn, 2 B flat clarinets and a B flat bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns in F, 3 B flat trumpets, 3 trombones and a tuba, 3 timpani (one player), 3 percussionists (first player: bass drum, bells, xylophone; second player: snare drum with regular and brush sticks, wood block, slapstick; third player: crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, triangle), solo piano and strings.

[edit] Form

The concerto is in the traditional three movements:

Allegro
Adagio - Andante con moto
Allegro agitato

There are strong thematic links between the outer movements, while the second movement is the most obviously jazz influenced.

The first movement features a recurring idea of a popular dance of the period, the Charleston and is clearly of the jazz idiom but is also written in a mature sonata form. It also plays heavily on an open octave with a fifth in between. (F-C-F) This pattern is the very first thing heard, the melody played by the Timpani, and it recurs as a bass harmony throughout the first and third movements. The first movement is constructed mostly out of a few melodies and rhythmic patterns; The most common one is a dominant seventh chord. It is used as a scale, and the rhythms are varried. In the beginning, it's used in a syncopated rhythm, and near the end, the soloist has a pattern using it; left hand playing the notes of the scale, and the right hand playing the next note up and then the original note before the whole pattern is repeated on the next note up. The main melody is made of three themes; a note repeated over and over until a jump up or down which becomes a melody with syncopated eighth notes and triplets, a chromaticly 'rotating' bass line, a rhythm using one note for all but the last beat and a half of each measure, and chords that go under the second part of the melody, going steadily down in a scale. All three of these recure three times throughout the movement. The first is when the piano first comes in; a piano solo has the repeated notes over the chromatic bass, then is moves to the syncopated and triplet rhythm with the chords underneath. It reaches a climax in a variation of the syncopated eighths, then calms down to the repeated notes (now in octaves). At this point, the strings come in, playing the melody with one note for all but the last three half beats. The piano then goes back into the syncopated and triplets melody, and the orchestra takes a countermelody. The piano takes the same climax, but doesn't reach the top note as it did last time; it goes back to a new melody in a cadenza. The second occurrence of the three main melodies is only two pages later. Led in by a descending chromatic scale in the orchestra, the piano takes the melody with all but the last three half notes on one note, the orchestra plays the Recurring note with jumps. When the orchestra reaches the syncopated and triplets melody, the piano takes their old countermelody. This section ends with the orchestra trailing off and the piano taking two cadenzas that span four octaves each. The next occurrence of these melodies is at the Climax, a section marked Grandioso. The piano takes as it's melody the rotating chromatic pattern, which was used before as harmony. The orchestra takes the Recuring notes and jumps once more, all except for the brass, which have one note for two and a half, then three jumping notes, as the piano had last time. When the orchestra reaches the syncopated and triplets section, the piano and brass play the chords that go under the melody; the piano having quick grace notes and tremulendos in octaves. Oddly enough, the movement does not end using these melodies at all, but with a scale of the dominant seventh, the rhythm being the eighth notes divided into triplets as aforementioned.

The second movement is the blues, with a slow beginning, a faster piano part, and a gradual build until near the end. When the full orchestra and piano are playing loud, only a few bars to the end, and it seems the piece will come to a crashing finish, everything pulls back to the original quiet melody and ends peacefuly.

The final movement is a pulsating, energetic finale that features the dominant seventh melody and the main melody of syncopated eighth notes and triplets from the first movement, the blues melody from the second movement, and a melody of its own. One section, at the Grandioso, is exactly the same as the corresponding section in the first movement, but this time, the scales at the end lead back into the pulsing patterns from the beginning. The third movement ends by pulling together the original octave and fifth pattern with the dominant seventh scale in octaves on the piano; the orchestra crescendos and the concerto ends with a bang. A performance of the complete work lasts around thirty minutes.

[edit] Radio broadcast

Although Gershwin never commercially recorded the concerto, he was later invited by Rudy Vallee to play the third movement from the concerto on an NBC radio broadcast in 1931, which was preserved on transcription discs and later issued on both LPs and compact discs. Vallee used a special arrangement prepared for his studio orchestra. Gershwin also played a few of his popular songs on the broadcast.<ref>Mark 56 liner notes</ref>