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MusicMasters 5062-2-C
Gershwin Performs Gershwin
Rare Recordings 1931 – 1935
“Music by Gershwin” Radio Program
February 19, 1934
1. Signature (1:31)
2. Of Thee I Sing: Overture
(3:32)
3. The Man I Love
(4:43)
4. I Got Rhythm
(2:46)
5. Commercial (0:58)
6. Swanee; Sign-Off
(1:08)
“Music by Gershwin” Radio Program,
April 30, 1934
7. Signature
(1:27)
8. Mine (1:05)
9. Variations on “I Got Rhythm”
(8:33)
10. Love Is Sweeping The Country
(1:00)
11. Commercial
(1:27)
12. Wintergreen For President; Sign-Off
(1:07)
Rudy Vallee “Fleischmann Hour” Radio
Program,
November 10, 1932
13. Variations on “Fascinating Rhythm”;
Variations on “Liza”
(2:27)
14. Second Prelude
(2:32)
15. Interview
(1:29)
16. I Got Rhythm
(1:03)
17. Second Rhapsody Rehearsal Performance,
June 26, 1931*
(14:21)
Porgy and Bess Rehearsal Performance,
July 19, 1935*
18. Introduction; Summertime
(4:08) Abbie Mitchell
19. A Woman Is A Sometime Thing
(2:30)
Edward Matthews
20. Act 1, Scene 1: Finale
(1:41)
21. My Man’s Gone Now
(4:15) Ruby Elzy
22. Bess, You Is My Woman Now
(5:33)
Todd Duncan, Anne Brown
George Gershwin, Pianist and *Conductor
Consultant: Edward Jablonski
Producer: Russell L. Caplan / American Classics, Inc.
(P) Amerco, Inc., 1991 © MusicMasters 1991 1710
Highway 35, Ocean, New Jersey 07712
Made and Printed in the USA Distributed in the USA by BMG
Music
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During a visit with Ira Gershwin at his Beverly Hills home
in the early 1970’s, the lifelong devotee wandered
into the Gershwin record archive and discovered a box of
recordings marked “George Gershwin Radio
Broadcasts.” An examination revealed several acetates
that had been copied from the original paper-thin celluloid
discs which George Gershwin had ordered, and which had since
completely deteriorated.
The box contained two broadcasts of the “Music by
Gershwin” radio program. To help underwrite the
composition of his “folk opera” masterpiece
Porgy and Bess, Gershwin had two 15-minute shows a week
– Mondays and Fridays, from 7:30 – 7:45 p.m., on
the National Broadcasting Company (originating from New York
City’s station WJZ). Later, it would become a weekly
half-hour show on the Columbia Broadcasting System. The very
first “Music by Gershwin” show, for Monday,
February 19, 1934, includes the Of Thee I Sing overture,
plus Gershwin playing “The Man I Love” and
“I Got Rhythm.” The second broadcast, from April
30, 1934, is notable for its complete performance of the
scintillating “I Got Rhythm” Variations. This
work George dedicated “To my brother Ira,” whose
favorite section was the spicy Chinese Variation.
Among popular radio show, the Rudy Vallee “Fleischmann
Hour” program, broadcast on Thursday evening in the 8
– 9 p.m. time slot (originating also from New York),
was one of the most adventurous. The next segment on this
album, from an acetate disc in Vallee’s library,
captures Gershwin’s first appearance on the show,
during the broadcast of November 10, 1932. As Gershwin
himself indicates, “Fascinating Rhythm” (from
Lady Be Good!, 1924) and “Liza” (from Show Girl,
1929) are played in variation form. Early in 1932 Gershwin
had set these down, along with 16 others, and published them
as George Gershwin’s Song Book; they are also know as
Piano Transcriptions of 18 Songs. These variants are
delightful representations of the Gershwin performance style
as well as his method of improvising on familiar themes. The
Second Prelude (of three) was written for a December 1926
recital in which the composer accompanied the Peruvian
contralto Marguerite d’Alvarez in a
“Futuristic” concert in New York and other
points. The guest appearance closes with another Gershwin
rendition of his favorite “I Got Rhythm” (from
Girl Crazy, 1930). Note the figurations he improvises when
he is joined by Vallee’s orchestra for the finale.
The Second Rhapsody is unique among Gershwin’s
“serious” compositions; it wasn’t
originally designed for the concert hall, but was an
expansion of the “Manhattan Rhapsody” sequence
written for Delicious, the Gershwin brothers’ first
film, which they had completed in the spring of 1931. The
Second Rhapsody remains one of George Gershwin’s most
important and, for some reason, least known works. Here he
conducts from the piano; we step into history.
Working from the Delicious version, Gershwin plotted the
fuller score for two pianos and from that developed the
final orchestration. “There is no program to the
Rhapsody,” he explained. “As the part of the
picture where it is to be played takes place in many streets
of New York, I used a starting-point that I called a
‘rivet theme,’ but, after that, I just wrote a
piece of music without any program.” In expanding the
Rhapsody, Gershwin tended toward attenuation of the two main
themes – the rivet motif and the broad, not quite
bluesy “Brahmsian melody,” as he called it.
On June 2, 1931, about a month after Gershwin had completed
the 2nd Rhapsody for Orchestra and Piano (so the title page
reads), he was given the use of the National Broadcasting
Company’s Studio B in Radio City to try it out. He was
happy with the outcome, as he confided to Isaac Goldberg,
his first biographer: “I hired fifty-five men last
Friday to play my orchestrations of the new Rhapsody, and
the result was most gratifying. In many respects, such as
orchestration and form, it is the best thing I’ve
written … The National Broadcasting Company, whose
studio I used, are connected by wire with the Victor
Recording Laboratories so the studio, as a great favor to
me, had a record made of the rehearsal … Good idea,
eh?”
The reference recording Gershwin obtained – an
aluminum-based acetate disc rediscovered years later with
Ira’s assistance, and preserved on this album –
enabled George to study the composition in order to make
some final changes. These were minor: e.g., in the opening,
he extended the piano’s rivet theme from four bars to
six.
More than a month before the orchestration for Porgy and
Bess was completed, Gershwin decided he would test some of
it with several members of the cast. William Paley, head of
CBS, arranged for the use of one of his company’s
transcription studios for the run-through. Gershwin, the
cast and a 43-piece orchestra entered the studio on July 19,
1934, to hear how Porgy (as it was still being called)
sounded. Gershwin worked from his manuscript, the soloists
and orchestra from the published music. During the
rehearsal, which lasted two and a half hours, engineer Jean
V. Grombach recorded some of the proceedings, preserving a
rare example of Gershwin conducting one of his own works
(the only other is the Second Rhapsody performance).
Gershwin announces the selections and since he did not have
a transcription turntable, the original 16-inch discs were
not worn. Their striking fidelity puts us at the
rehearsal.
It is fascinating to witness Gershwin’s hand shaping
the music with sensitivity and assurance. The introductory
music leading into “Summertime,” with the
composer providing the “Jasbo Brown” piano music
(eventually cut from the opera) and filling in vocally for
the chorus, is an electric revelation of his musicianship.
As he cues in different sections of the orchestra, there is
an excitement and tension that culminates in the signing of
the now-classic “Summertime” by Abbie Mitchell
(soprano), the original Clara, who never again recorded her
aria. She is followed by the original Jake, Edward Matthews
(baritone), in “A Woman Is A Sometime Thing,”
with a little vocal assistance from the composer. The brief
orchestral passage which follows is a beautiful blending of
Porgy’s entrance music (“They Pass By
Singin’”) and the introduction of what will
become “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” in the next
scene.
The remarkably gifted Ruby Elzy (soprano), the original
Serena, often stopped the show with her magnificent
rendition of one of the opera’s most moving arias,
“My Man’s Gone Now.” The session concludes
with the original title stars, Todd Duncan (bass-baritone)
and Anne Brown (soprano), in the popular duet, “Bess,
You Is My Woman Now,” one of the great moments in the
American lyric theatre – just as Porgy and Bess
remains the American Opera, and George Gershwin, the
American Composer.
- Edward Jablonski
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Mr. Jablonski, who was a longtime friend of Ira
Gershwin’s, is the author of The Encyclopedia of
American Music (Doubleday, 1981) and Gershwin (DoubleDay,
1987), for which he received ASCAP’s Deems Taylor
Award.
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Music by George Gershwin (all selections); lyrics by Ira
Gershwin (Tracks 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 12 & 16), by Ira
Gershwin and DuBose Heyward (Track 22), by DuBose Heyward
(Tracks 18, 19 & 21), by Irving Caesar (Track
6).
All selections ASCAP, used with permission of Warner
Bros. Music
Special thanks to Mrs. Ira Gershwin, Marc George Gershwin,
Francis Gershwin Godowsky, Leopold Godowky III and Ronald L.
Blanc for assistance in obtaining recordings from the
Library of Congress for digital remastering. Special thanks
also to Eleanor Vallee Hustedt for permission to remaster
the Rudy Vallee “Fleischmann Hour” broadcast;
source tape courtesy Ed Jablonski, “Music by
Gershwin” and Rudy Vallee “Fleischmann
Hour” programs appear courtesy the National
Broadcasting Company, Inc.
Front Cover: Self-portrait, 1936/Courtesy Ed
Jablonski
Transfer Engineer: Michael Donaldson;
Production Assistant: Kevin Cole
Mastering Engineer: Jack Towers.
