|
Music History Film Clips
Remembering George Gershwin and 'Rhapsody in Blue'
(The Magazine of Art, 1937)
By clicking the blue title link above, you will be treated to a postmortem appraisal of the American composer George Gershwin (1898 – 1937), creator of "Rhapsody in Blue". The article was written by one of his contemporaries; Gershwin is admired in this article, but not idolized:"No one could have been more surprised than George Gershwin at the furor the "Rhapsody" caused in highbrow circles. He had dashed it off in three weeks as an experiment in a form that he only vaguely understood. In no sense had he deliberately set out to make an honest woman out of jazz."
...he was no American Mozart, but when he died he was our most important composer. And while he wrote no great music, I chose to believe that he would have written it."
| 'Porgy & Bess' (Stage, 1935)
Music critic and scholar Isaac Goldberg (1887 - 1938) reviewed the opening performance of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" for the editors of STAGE MAGAZINE:
"Why the Jew of the North should, in time, take up the song of the Southern Negro and fuse into a typically American product is an involved question. Perhaps, underneath the jazz rhythms and the general unconventionality of musical process lies the common history of an oppressed minority, and an ultimately Oriental origin. In any case, the human focus of this particular type of musical Americanism has been, from the very first notes, George Gershwin." *Listen to a 1935 Recording of Lawrence Tibbett Performing an Aria from PORGY and BESS*
| Stravinsky's 'Symphony in Three Movements' Reviewed (Script, 1947)
A printable music review by Lawrence Morton (1904 - 1987), long time advocate of modern music and habitual contributor to MUSICAL QUARTERLY and MODERN MUSIC. One of Morton's greatest interests was the music of Stravinsky, and it is Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements" that was discussed in this 1947 review:"The symphony opens in full orchestra with a mighty affirmation of confidence and resolution. Then the horns state the main problem with which the composer would confront us: other instruments reiterate it, as if to show it to us from new angles and with new perspectives..." This particular performance was conducted in Los Angeles by Otto Klemperer (1885 - 1973), who was singled out for high praise in this article.
|
| Igor Stravinsky and the Player Piano (The Independent, 1925)
"Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971), acclaimed as the most distinguished, if not the greatest, of living composers, now sojourning in America after an absence of ten years, ardently advocates and practices the composition of mechanical music - of not merely piano music, that is, which can be played on an automatic instrument, but music composed without purpose of performance by hand, designed for the player-piano solely, and intended to take advantage of characteristics and limitations inherent in an instrument operated by a perforated roll of paper.""There is anew polyphonic truth in the player-piano. There are new possibilities. It is something more. It is not the same thing as a piano..."
| Aaron Copland's Third Symphony (Script, 1948)
A review of Aaron Copland's "Third Symphony" written in 1948 by the respected Los Angeles music critic and historian Lawrence Morton (1908 - 1987):"...there can be no mistake about the "Third". It is a solid structure, exceedingly rich and varied in expressiveness, large in concept, masterful in execution, completely unabashed and outspoken." "No wonder that Sergi Koussevitsky called it 'the greatest American symphony.'" *Listen to Aaron Copland's Third Symphony*
| Lady Macbeth of Mzensk by Dmitri Shostakovich (Literary Digest, 1935)
"The Cleveland Orchestra, on February 5 (1935), with Arthur Rodzinski conducting, will introduce to New York 'Lady Macbeth of Mzensk', an opera by twenty-eight year-old Soviet composer, Dmitri Shostakovich.""Shostakovich completed the work in December, 1932. It is the first of a projected cycle of four operas in which the composer plans to trace the condition of women in Russia..."
|
MORE ARTICLES >>> PAGE: * 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * > NEXT |
|
|
