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I have great respect for George Gershwin. A successful songwriter and dance-band and theatrical composer, he longed for the one thing he didn't have: classical respectability. His classical colleagues were amused at this ambition, because Gershwin was more famous than most of them and made more money than any, but he overcame his lack of formal training and worked hard. He learned to orchestrate his own music - a tedious, picayune, skill-heavy job - because that's what classical composers do. He wrote a piano concerto and an opera, because those are things that classical composers write. And he would have done more had he not died at 38. But all his work is still shot through with his jazz, blues, and pop music background. His achievement was to be the first great crossover composer, and one who makes Sir Paul look pretty lazy.
But if I respect Gershwin, that doesn't mean I like his music very much. With more time and practice he might have struck a different balance, but to me there's a huge difference between a classical composer who incorporates jazz elements and a jazzman who employs classical overlays, and I hear Gershwin as the latter. Especially when Symphony Silicon Valley transmutes itself into the Paul Whiteman dance band (full brass, reduced strings, and a row of saxophones pushing the rest of the winds almost off the stage) to play it. I go to the symphony for a lot of things, but this is not one of them.
Still, I had the season ticket so there I was. I'm not the person to judge the success of the result, but it wasn't terminally boring, and that's a good sign in music I don't much like. Paul Polivnick was the somewhat desultory conductor. Gwendolyn Mok played piano in the Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue and got drowned out a lot. Some brassy-voiced Broadway star named Sara Uriarte Berry came out and sang some Gershwin show tunes, amplified. I hope she liked the taste of the microphone.
All was framed by a narration packed as a 1920s radio show, brief and matter-of-fact except for the sponsor commercials, which were funny and true to the style of actual ads of radio days.* These were for a laxative chewing gum, and I probably wasn't the only person there to be reminded of Monty Python's "Most Awful Family in Britain" sketch, the one where the breakfast conversation about laxative cereals is interrupted by mad dashes to the toilet.
No dashes here, fortunately. When Mok did this program in London, the narration was delivered by Humphrey Burton, a renowned BBC classical producer. And who do we get? Hoyt Smith, the morning announcer on our beloved (can you feel the sarcasm?) semi-classical radio station, KDFC. Someone once told Hoyt that they liked his banter on the radio, and ever since then he's been even more insufferable than before. (There's a dim taste of this on his profile.) But he was not allowed to banter or ad-lib in this script, thank goodness for small mercies.
So it wasn't too bad. Walking back to the car afterwards along two blocks of San Jose's hottest Saturday night clubs, and hearing the music pouring out from within, made one appreciate Gershwin all the more.*
(*These observations courtesy of my mother. Happy Mother's Day!)
But if I respect Gershwin, that doesn't mean I like his music very much. With more time and practice he might have struck a different balance, but to me there's a huge difference between a classical composer who incorporates jazz elements and a jazzman who employs classical overlays, and I hear Gershwin as the latter. Especially when Symphony Silicon Valley transmutes itself into the Paul Whiteman dance band (full brass, reduced strings, and a row of saxophones pushing the rest of the winds almost off the stage) to play it. I go to the symphony for a lot of things, but this is not one of them.
Still, I had the season ticket so there I was. I'm not the person to judge the success of the result, but it wasn't terminally boring, and that's a good sign in music I don't much like. Paul Polivnick was the somewhat desultory conductor. Gwendolyn Mok played piano in the Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue and got drowned out a lot. Some brassy-voiced Broadway star named Sara Uriarte Berry came out and sang some Gershwin show tunes, amplified. I hope she liked the taste of the microphone.
All was framed by a narration packed as a 1920s radio show, brief and matter-of-fact except for the sponsor commercials, which were funny and true to the style of actual ads of radio days.* These were for a laxative chewing gum, and I probably wasn't the only person there to be reminded of Monty Python's "Most Awful Family in Britain" sketch, the one where the breakfast conversation about laxative cereals is interrupted by mad dashes to the toilet.
No dashes here, fortunately. When Mok did this program in London, the narration was delivered by Humphrey Burton, a renowned BBC classical producer. And who do we get? Hoyt Smith, the morning announcer on our beloved (can you feel the sarcasm?) semi-classical radio station, KDFC. Someone once told Hoyt that they liked his banter on the radio, and ever since then he's been even more insufferable than before. (There's a dim taste of this on his profile.) But he was not allowed to banter or ad-lib in this script, thank goodness for small mercies.
So it wasn't too bad. Walking back to the car afterwards along two blocks of San Jose's hottest Saturday night clubs, and hearing the music pouring out from within, made one appreciate Gershwin all the more.*
(*These observations courtesy of my mother. Happy Mother's Day!)
