Gershwin: Porgy And Bess

Description

George Gershwin (1898-1937)Porgy and Bess Revolutionaries and their works are usually controversial in their time. They tend to be better appreciated in later years. So it was with George Gershwin and his landmark folk opera, Porgy and Bess. The Gershwin saga has been told so many times and in so many ways that it would be superfluous to delve into it here. The point must be made, however, that Gershwin’s achievement seems all the greater as time moves us farther away from it. He was appreciated in many ways and at many junctures in his brilliant career, but never so greatly as after his passing. His importance was recognised by some perceptive souls soon after his death. After Jascha Heifetz had played a Gershwin composition at one of the regular chamber music sessions at the home of Columbia Pictures musical director Morris Stoloff, the legendary violinist said to his friends, "We should be ashamed that we didn’t appreciate this man more when he was here in our midst." The same can be said about Porgy and Bess. It was not unappreciated at the time of its première in 1935. Unconventional for its time, it required the passage of time to be seen for what it is. This two-disc set gives us the opportunity to do just that. Nearly three-quarters of a century after Gershwin, together with with his brother, Ira, and the author DuBose Heyward, created it, Porgy and Bess has now acquired a lustre that for a time was buried in its core. Myths about the show have developed. One is that it was trounced when it first appeared. On close reading of the numerous reviews it received at the time, it is clear that it had some staunch admirers and some equally vehement detractors. For the most part, however, it was viewed as a work so different from the norm that even some attuned ears needed time to take it all in and render a fuller verdict at a later date. One of the most revealing reviews of this musical saga of South Carolina’s Catfish Row was delivered by the composer and critic Virgil Thomson on the show’s revival in 1941, four years after Gershwin’s death. He wrote, "Porgy and Bess is a strange case. It has more faults than any work I have ever known by a reputable composer. There are faults of taste, faults of technique and grave miscalculations about theatrical effect…. [Gershwin] didn’t know much about aesthetics and he couldn’t orchestrate for shucks; but his strength was as the strength of ten because his musical heart was really pure." The present release also contains purity. It presents recordings of Porgy and Bess made immediately after its unveiling and for the first ten years of its life. It enables the listener to go back to that time. With these recordings restored and gathered together for the first time, revisionist history can be eliminated and it is possible to imagine how the score would have sounded to listeners of the 1930s and 1940s. Listening to other works of this period