Gershwin, George / Judd / New Zealand So: American in Paris / Porgy & Bess Suite
Gershwin, George / Judd / New Zealand So: American in Paris / Porgy & Bess Suite
Format: CD
Wanting to order from us over the holiday period but need some more information. We are here to help! Please see our Christmas Shipping page for more information.
On average, orders containing available-to-ship items are processed and dispatched within 1-2 business days, although this is not guaranteed.
Orders containing preorder items will ship as 1 fulfillment once all items in the order are available to ship.
Please note, Tower Records Merchandise and Exclusives are dispatched separately. On average, these items take 3-4 business days to dispatch, although this is not guaranteed.
The estimated shipping times that are displayed at checkout are from the point of dispatch.
See our shipping policy for more information.
We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item(s) to make a return.
For orders created between November 20th 2024 and December 31st 2024, we have extended our normal return period. For orders made between this period, customers have up to 60 days from the receipt of goods to return an item. Please see our Christmas Returns page for more information.
To be eligible for a return of an unwanted item, your item must be in the same condition that you received it and in its original packaging.
In the unfortunate situation that a product is damaged/faulty/incorrect, let us know and we will endeavor to correct any issue as soon as possible.
Please see our refund policy for more information.
Artist: Gershwin, George / Judd / New Zealand So
Label: Naxos American
Product Type: COMPACT DISCS
UPC: 636943910726
Genre: Classical
Gershwin began work on An American in Paris in the spring of 1928 and it's première by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Damrosch took place later that year on 13 th December in Carnegie Hall (three years earlier in the same venue Damrosch had conducted the first performance of Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F). In this hugely popular one-movement symphonic poem, whose colorful orchestration includes four saxophones and several taxi horns, the composer intended 'to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere'. The melancholic blues theme announced by the solo trumpet, suggesting a sudden bout of homesickness on the part of the protagonist, is one of the finest Gershwin wrote. Following the première in Boston's Symphony Hall of his Second Rhapsody, conducted by Serge Koussevitsky on 29 th January 1932, Gershwin and several friends took a two-week holiday in Havana. The composer, fascinated by the small Cuban dance orchestras with their novel rhythms and unusual percussion instruments such as guiros, maracas, claves and bongos, was inspired to write the Cuban Overture. He orchestrated the work between 1 st and 9 th August 1932, completing it just a week before the first All-Gershwin Concert at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, an open-air concert attended by some 18,000 people which was, according to the composer, 'the most exciting night I have ever had'. Cast in Gershwin's characteristic fast-slow-fast form, he wrote that he had 'endeavored to combine the Cuban rhythms with my original thematic material. The result is a symphonic overture which embodies the essence of Cuban dance'. Gershwin's magnum opus, the three-act opera Porgy and Bess, was written to a libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Based on Heyward's novel Porgy about life among the black inhabitants of Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, the opera was started in late February 1934 and the seven hundred page full score was completed in September 1935. Heyward memorably described the idiosyncratic working methods of the Gershwin brothers, who 'would get at the piano, pound, wrangle, swear, burst into weird snatches of song, and eventually emerge with a polished lyric'. It numbers amongst it's classic songs 'Summertime', 'I Loves You, Porgy' and 'It Ain't Necessarily So'. The orchestral suite heard on this recording, the Symphonic Picture from Porgy and Bess arranged by Robert Russell Bennett, has become the standard version since it's première in 1943, this despite the fact that Gershwin made his own arrangement in 1936. Evidently long forgotten about by the time Bennett made his arrangement, Gershwin's suite was retitled Catfish Row by Ira when it was rediscovered in 1958. The opera, a commercial and critical failure at the time, is now recognized as one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century American music.
Tracks:
1.1 Gershwin in Hollywood
1.2 An American in Paris
1.3 Cuban Overture
1.4 Porgy and Bess (Symphonic Picture)
