KarazwLaimoon
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Music Talks > 2015 Spring
Music Club: Wednesday 4 March 2015 (7 pm)
Title:
An Evening with Gershwin:
Rhapsody in Blue
+ other great songs performed
by various artists
Rhapsody in Blue:
Fazil Say (piano) with the hr-Sinfonieorchester
(Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra) + Carlos Miguel Prieto
(conductor)
The Rhapsody is commented on
by Michel Legrand and Thiolier in a few separate clips.
Other works by Gershwin
will be presented such as songs (vocal and on piano), parts of his other
orchestral works, etc.
Classic Notes Click Here
Mind Doodles Click Here
Classic FM Click Here
Gershwin and Rhapsody in
Blue:
Rhapsody in Blue
is a 1924 musical composition by American composer George Gershwin for solo
piano and jazz band, which combines elements of classical music with
jazz-influenced effects. Commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman, the
composition was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé several times, including the
original 1924 scoring, "theater orchestra" setting published in 1926,
and the symphony orchestra scoring published in 1942.
The piece received
its premiere in the concert, An Experiment in Modern Music, which was held on
February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Whiteman and his band with
Gershwin playing the piano. For the next 17 minutes, George Gershwin, an
unknown 26-year-old composer, caressed and pounded the piano at center stage,
chasing the orchestra through a thrill ride of skyrocketing notes. It was an
unforgettable debut -one that brought new respect to jazz and helped redefine
classical music. Today, Rhapsody in Blue is one of the 10 most-performed works
of the 20th century, right up there with "Happy Birthday" and
"White Christmas."
Rhapsody in Blue established Gershwin's reputation as a serious
composer and has since become one of the most popular of all American concert
works.
When George Gershwin was 11,
he overheard a friend playing Anton Dvorak's Humoresque No 7 on the violin. The music provoked "a
flashing revelation" that hooked Gershwin immediately. He began sneaking
over to a neighbor's house in Brooklyn to teach himself to play different
instruments. A year later, when Gershwin's mother brought home a secondhand
upright piano, the family was stunned to see George sit down and tear through
vaudeville tunes. From then on, he was glued to the ivories. A few years of
formal lessons followed, but his teachers could barely keep up with Gershwin's
prodigious talent.
At 15, Gershwin quit school
and took a job as a song plugger in Tin Pan Alley, New York's music publishing
district. Song pluggers were basically pianists who sold sheet music by
demonstrating the latest tunes for singers, dancers, and producers. With his
outgoing personality, Gershwin was a natural, often weaving in his own musical
ideas to liven up the pieces. Before long, he became a full-time songwriter,
When he was 21, he penned his first hit, "Swanee," made famous by
blackface entertainer Al Jolson. The 1920s equivalent of a Beyoncé single,
"Swanee" spent nine weeks at No. 1, selling one million copies of
sheet music and two million records. Soon Broadway came calling, and Gershwin
became, in his own modest words, "a fairly busy young composer."
Fazıl Say wrote his first
piece – a piano sonata – as early as 1984, at the age of fourteen, when he was
a student at the Conservatory of his home town Ankara. It was followed, in this
early phase of his development, by several chamber works without an opus
number, including Schwarze Hymnen for violin and piano and a guitar
concerto. He subsequently designated as his opus 1 one of the works that he had
played in the concert that won him the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New
York: the Four Dances of Nasreddin Hodja. This work already displays in
essence the significant features of his personal style: a rhapsodic,
fantasia-like basic structure; a variable rhythm, often dance-like, though
formed through syncopation; a continuous, vital driving pulse; and a wealth of
melodic ideas that may often be traced back to themes from the folk music of
Turkey and its neighbors. In these respects, Fazıl Say stands to some extent in
the tradition of composers like Béla Bartók, George Enescu, and György Ligeti,
who also drew on the rich musical folklore of their countries. He attracted
international attention with the piano piece Black Earth (1997), in
which he employs techniques familiar to us from John Cage and his works for
prepared piano.
After this, Say increasingly
turned to the large orchestral forms. Taking his inspiration from the poetry
(and the biographies) of the writers Nâzım Hikmet and Metin Altıok, he composed
works for soloists, chorus and orchestra which, especially in the case of the
oratorio Nâzim, clearly take up the tradition of composers such as Carl Orff.
In addition to the modern European instrumentarium, In the year 2007 he aroused
international interest with his Violin Concerto 1001 Nights in the Harem,
which is based on the celebrated tales of the same name, but deals specifically
with the fate of seven women from a harem. Since its world premiere by Patricia
Kopatchinskaja, the piece has already received further performances in many
international concert halls.
Fazıl Say scored a further
great success with his first symphony, the Istanbul Symphony, premiered in 2010
at the conclusion of his five-year residency at the Konzerthaus Dortmund.
Jointly commissioned by the WDR and the Konzerthaus Dortmund in the framework
of Ruhr. 2010, the work constitutes a vibrant and poetic tribute to the
metropolis on the Bosporus and its millions of inhabitants. The same year saw
the composition, among other pieces, of his Divorce String Quartet (based on
atonal principles), and commissioned works like the Piano Concerto Nirvana
Burning for the Salzburg Festival and a Trumpet Concerto for the
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, premiered by Gábor Boldoczki.
In response to a commission
from the 2011 Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Say has also written a Clarinet
Concerto for Sabine Meyer that refers to the life and work of the Persian
poet Omar Khayyam. Fazıl Say’s works are issued worldwide by the
renowned music publishers Schott Music of Mainz.
Fazil's Home Page Click Here
Facebook Click Here
