The sounds of past and present are on the menu for Houston Symphony’s red-hot season. The 1920’s Jazz era, perfectly represented by George Gershwin’s Concerto in F, is the centerpiece while other living composers like Shawn Okpebholo and Adolphus Hailstork will be offered during Zoom! and Survive (Symphony No. 4). Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1, Opus 9 rounds out the final spot for this weekend’s performance set list at Jones Hall.
Leading the world class orchestra is Jeffrey Kahane, who will be both a conductor and a pianist for the concert. He took a few minutes to speak with the Houston Press about the great American composers on the set list, starting first with the Gershwin piece.
“I think George Gershwin has one of the most profound legacies of any American musician. He has a special place. What we have is a wonderful repertoire that has endured. In a sense, the composer has perhaps the deepest and broadest reach into Americans’ love for music,” Kahane said.
That love has lasted, and it has stretched deep into the passions of musicians – especially for skilled pianists like Kahane.
“Concerto in F has a very special place in pianists’ hearts because it is an opportunity for those of us who spend most of our lives playing the standard canonical repertoire of Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Contemporary music to put on the garb of a Jazz pianist. It’s a work which cannot be easily classified. You could say it’s a Jazz concerto, but it doesn’t involve any improvisation,” Kahane said, speaking of Jazz’s sometimes precarious nature.
“It’s not Jazz in the strictest sense, but it could only have been written by someone who was a master Jazz musician and a great pianist as Gershwin was. It’s a piece I’ve played more times than I can count, and it is to this day one of the pieces that’s closest to my heart.”
The story of Gershwin’s Concerto in F follows on the heels of one of his most other noted works, Rhapsody in Blue.
“It is arguably the most popular American piano concerto. The origins of the work started with Walter Damrosch, who was the music director and conductor of the New York Symphony, which would later merge with the New York Philharmonic Society and the two orchestras would become the New York Philharmonic. Damrosch was at the legendary performance in New York when Gershwin gave the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, and he almost immediately wrote to Gershwin and offered him the opportunity to write a next concerto,” Kahane added. “Gershwin accepted the offer, but he was working on two or three Broadway musicals at the time. It took him another year or so before he actually finished the work, but it proved to be a smashing success, and it has been a staple of the American concerto repertoire ever since, and deservedly so.”
Kahane will have the opportunity to once again play the famed piece, while simultaneously conducting the orchestra while at the keys. The feat is something that might seem impossible upon first blush, but he says it is actually not too uncommon, especially considering music’s history.
“There have been many musicians going back to the time of Mozart and Beethoven who both played and conducted, and for the last 100 years, they’ve conducted from the piano as well. It is something I’ve done for most of my career,” he said.
It begs the question: how do you both keep your hands busy on the piano and also lead an orchestra. The answer, he said, is in the eyes.
“I’m able to use my hands some of the time, and when I can’t use my hands, I’m using my head and my eyes and my eyebrows. It’s definitely much more challenging because of the sheer size of the Houston Symphony orchestra than it would be if I were conducting a Mozart concerto from the keyboard where it’s a more intimate, smaller scale orchestra. When you have a big, full orchestra as you do in the Gershwin concerto, there is a greater challenge, but it’s the kind of thing that orchestras really enjoy doing because it calls on all of their skills. They’re not relying on someone standing on the podium with a baton. They’re relying on their ears as well as their eyes and their connection with the soloist,” he said.
It’s a challenge the orchestra is prepared for, and it’s also one that will highlight one of the greatest composers we have ever known.
Gershwin’s work has been synonymous with the American Jazz repertoire ever since his pen touched the paper. What’s more is that while most people know the name “George” Gershwin, many don’t realize that he had an older brother Ira who was also a successful musician.
Ira’s legacy might not be as easily remembered as his younger brother’s, but Ira was most certainly recognized for his genius. He was the first songwriting lyricist to receive the Pulitzer Prize.
Alone, either brother was good, but together, the duo were an incredible force. They composed more than two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood, including their trilogy of political satires Strike Up The Band, Of Thee I Sing, and Let ‘Em Eat Cake. Need we mention their other hit…Porgy and Bess?
During this weekend’s concerts, the Houston Symphony will travel from the lasting legacy of Gershwin to the living legacy that are Hailstork and Okpebholo.
“Shawn Okpebholo is a really outstanding younger composer. He was commissioned by the United States Air Force band to write this piece for strings and percussion. He wanted to evoke something about the times that we’re living in. He was motivated by his desire to construct a composition that embodied a word or a phrase or an idea that sort of defines this this moment in our lives. Of course, Zoom came to mind. It has a double meaning. It’s obviously referring to the technology that that kept us in touch with one another, but it also references the things that came out of our interactions as human beings during this very challenging times,” Kahane said.
The piece, like the name Zoom!, is short. It last only six minutes, but Kahane says it makes an impact.
“It really does capture something. It radiates joy. It’s got a tremendous rhythmic energy,” he said.
To juxtapose that piece, Hailstork is nearly two times the age of Okpebholo, but Hailstork still has his groove.
“Hailstork is one of our very important elder statesmen of the American symphonic tradition. Survive is music of great power. He works on a on a big canvas. This piece, Still Holding On, was written in large part as a salute to William Grant Still, who is often referred to as the Dean of African American composers. Still Holding On makes reference to Still’s first symphony, which is known as the African American Symphony and was a pioneering, important work in the history of 20th century music in America,” Kahane said. “It falls into two sort of large sections. The first is very lyrical and features a beautiful duet between the oboe and the principal cello. That segues into a second part of the movement which is tremendously propulsive and rhythmic, and in the final section he uses African American spirituals in a powerful, moving way.”
It will be a great complement to the other piece on the program, which is Barber’s symphony, which takes the audience of a full rollercoaster of melodic impressions.
“It’s an amazing and ingenious work. It’s a symphony and a single movement which Barber wrote while he was still in his mid 20s. It had tremendous success right from the outset. It was the first symphony by an American composer ever to be performed at the Salzburg Festival. The entire work is extremely compact. It takes less than 20 minutes to play, and in the span of that 20 minutes, he manages to create the sense of a full form movement symphony,” Kahane said.
It also brings the Gershwin concept full circle.
“Barber was one of the most profoundly gifted composers with respect to lyricism that America has ever produced. He shared that with Gershwin, even though they’re wildly different in terms of the kinds of music that they wrote. They both had this fantastic gift for lyricism and for melody. The solo oboe role in the Barber piece is breathtakingly beautiful. I never cease to be astounded by the ingenuity of it and how much he manages to compress into just under 20 minutes of music and how absolutely original it is,” he said.
Those are words…and music…to live by. And it will all be on glorious display this weekend, courtesy of the Houston Symphony.
The Houston Symphony presents Gershwin Concerto In F Friday, September 30 and Saturday, October 1 at 8 p.m and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana. For information or tickets, call 713-224-7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org. $29 – $124.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
