Program Notes }
Cuban Overture
George Gershwin
Born in Brooklyn, New York,
September 26, 1898; died in Beverly Hills,
California, July 11, 1937
George Gershwin was very conscious of
his lack of early formal musical training
and in adulthood studied with various
teachers to remedy it whenever his frenetic
schedule allowed. Although he’d allowed
Ferde Grofé to score Rhapsody in Blue, he
orchestrated all his subsequent concert
pieces himself and bristled at journalists
who periodically accused him of letting
others polish his work. Just how sophisticated his mastery of the orchestra became
can be heard in his Cuban Overture,
written in 1932.
At that time, Gershwin was studying theory and composition with Joseph
Schillinger, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and this piece grew
from his lessons in counterpoint (the art of
weaving together multiple musical lines).
It was also inspired by a vacation he’d
taken in Cuba that winter; he became
fascinated with Cuban dance music and
returned with several Cuban percussion instruments in his luggage—bongo
drums, Cuban sticks or claves, gourd, and
maracas—that received prominent parts
in his new work. By the summer of 1932,
he was rapidly completing the Overture
for a mammoth all-Gershwin concert
held outdoors at New York’s Lewisohn
Stadium on August 16. That concert
was a spectacular success, with 18,000 in
attendance and thousands more turned
away at the gates. Gershwin called it “the
most exciting night I ever had.”
Cuban Overture is in three sections,
opening and closing with the fast, intricate
rumba music featuring the indigenous
Cuban instruments. In the middle, a
lengthy slow section shows Gershwin’s ability to create a subtle, haunting atmosphere
conjuring a tropical night. The brilliant
orchestration throughout suggests the
composer had learned a thing or two from
his friend Maurice Ravel, but the verve and
melodic inspiration are pure Gershwin.
which he discovered soon after its publication in 1947. “From that moment, the
composition of a symphony … acquired
an almost compulsive quality,” Bernstein
remembered, “and I worked on it steadily
… in Taos, in Philadelphia, in Richmond,
Mass., in Tel Aviv, in planes, in hotel lobbies.” The orchestration was done in the
midst of a tour with the Pittsburgh Symphony, during which Bernstein conducted
25 concerts in 28 days. As was to happen
throughout his life, the need to compose
was already in conflict with the demands of
his exploding conducting career.
Bernstein based his hybrid work closely
on the six-part format of the poem and its
focus on the conversations of three men
and a woman during a long, alcohol-fueled
night in a wartime New York City bar.
In his words, “The essential line of the
poem (and of the music) is a record of our
difficult search for faith. In the end, two
of the characters enunciate the recognition
of this faith … at the same time revealing an inability to relate to it in their daily
lives, except through blind acceptance.”
Bernstein explained that “the conception
of a symphony with piano solo emerges
from the personal indentification of myself
with the poem. In this sense, the pianist
provides an autobiographical protagonist,
set against an orchestral mirror.” Appropriately, Bernstein himself played the solo part
at “Age of Anxiety’s” premiere performance
on April 8, 1949 with the Boston Symphony conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.
Here are Bernstein’s own descriptions of the
Symphony’s six sections:
Instrumentation: Three flutes, piccolo, two
oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass
clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four
horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion and strings.
Symphony No. 2,
“The Age of Anxiety”
Leonard Bernstein
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, August 25,
1918; died in New York City, October 14, 1990
None of the three works Leonard Bernstein
labeled as symphonies in any way resembles
a conventional orchestral symphony.
Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah,” includes
a singer and chorus and is built around
Old Testament texts in Hebrew. Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” which the BSO
performed last season, combines choruses,
vocal soloist, and a spoken text to express
what is essentially Bernstein’s very personal
argument with God. And in