Gershwin: Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture

This release of five new titles in the American Classics series is devoted to the music of George Gershwin.

Arguably the best-known of all 20th-century composers, George Gershwin's music encompasses with equal skill both the classical and popular genres. He was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York City, in September 1898 to immigrant Jewish parents. He died at the early age of 38 from a tumour in the brain.

Gershwin started to show an interest in music from about the age of ten and, although receiving some piano tutelage, was largely self-taught in composition. It was only later in his career that he received some formal instruction in composition.

Gershwin's first employment was as a song plugger for a New York music publishing company. His first song was published in 1916 and a year later he had his first commercial successes with the rag Rialto Ripples. This was followed, in 1919, by his first big international hit, Swanee. Now established as a successful composer of popular songs, between 1919 and 1933, Gershwin produced, in collaboration with his elder brother Ira, some of the most successful Broadway musicals.

In 1924 he was commissioned by the band leader, Paul Whiteman, to produce what was to be his first 'serious' composition, the Rhapsody in Blue. This was followed a year later by the Piano Concerto in F and, in 1928, by An American in Paris. His opera Porgy and Bess was first performed on Broadway in 1935.

These five releases present a comprehensive view of Gershwin's music from the Three Preludes for solo piano to the Piano Concerto, taking in a good selection of the show songs and improvisations.

Although a fine composer in his own right, Robert Russell Bennett's ultimate reputation rests on the work he did as an orchestrator/arranger of other people's music, mainly for Broadway and Hollywood musicals. In 1942 he arranged the music of his good friend Gershwin. Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture includes most of the best-known songs from the opera. Second Rhapsody is a 1931 concert piece for piano and orchestra. The Piano Concerto in F was written in 1925 on a commission from the conductor and director Walter Damrosch. The Concerto shows considerable development in Gershwin's compositional technique, mainly because he orchestrated the entire work himself.

Following a litany of requests, Dorati's supreme recording of Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite is reissued on Eloquence together with the original coupling of Robert Russell Bennett's swaggering and masterly orchestral synthesis from Porgy and Bess. As a bonus, Howard Hanson's bright Mercury recording of Grofe's Mississippi Suite fills out this reissue.

Some of the most famous and iconic works of the whole of 20th-century music in arrangement for symphonic brass. The Royal Academy of Music is recognised as amongst the world's foremost centres for brass studies, led by Head of Brass Professor James Watson.

The French pianist Bruce Fontaine has released his third solo CD on the Transart label, this time concentrating on the music of one of his favourite composers. It is appropriate that these performances are conducted by a young American conductor, David Wroe. Fontaine plays Bach and Duke Ellington with the same fervor and these interpretations show that he has a lot of swing.