Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

…this remarkable Porgy and Bess. It was made during the Berlin run of the famous 1952-3 European tour… of a production by Robert Breen, with an all-black company under the work's original conductor... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2008, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 30th Jun 2008
Catalogue No: GHCD231314
Label: Guild
Series: Historical

Gramophone Magazine

August 2008

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Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

Live Recording - Titania Palast, Berlin 21 September 1952.
Leontyne Price (Bess), William Warfield (Porgy), Cab Calloway (Sporting Life), John McCurry (Crown)
Eva Jessye Choir, Rias-Unterhaltungsorchester
Alexander Smallens

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About

As George Gershwin celebrated his thirtieth birthday in 1928, he was at the height of his early maturity. It must have seemed to such a self-confident artist as he that there was nothing he could not achieve if he so wished. However, Gershwin at the age of thirty had not yet written his masterpiece, although he had had ideas for setting an operatic libretto to be fashioned from Du Bose Hayward's novel Porgy for some years, ever since he began reading it one night, unable to sleep, and – gripped by the telling – stayed awake until daybreak before he had finished it. Several factors conspired to delay the realisation of his dream. The musical theatre continued to beckon: in 1929, he wrote two Broadway shows – the first was Show Girl, a somewhat hastily put together vehicle which utilised An American in Paris as a ballet. This admixture did not work too well, and the second show was the revised version of Strike Up The Band, which opened early in January 1930, six months after Show Girl and over two years after the first version.

Reviews

September 2008

…this remarkable Porgy and Bess. It was made during the Berlin run of the famous 1952-3 European tour… of a production by Robert Breen, with an all-black company under the work's original conductor Alexander Smallens. The chorus sings with precision and fervour, and there are characterful performances in the many smaller roles. The young Leontyne Price signs of he future greatness as Bess... William Warfield makes a virile Porgy, and Cab Calloway does a star turn as Sportin' Life. And altogether this recording, refurbished in startlingly immediate mono sound, is both a fascinating document and thoroughly enjoyable in its own right.

2010

In 1952 the US State Department funded a world tour of Porgy and Bess. The production by Everyman Opera eventually visited cities across the American continent, north and south, and gave the British, French, Italian, German, Czech and Russian premieres of Gershwin's opera. The tour inspired two famous memoirs, Truman Capote's The Muses are Heard and Maya Angelou's Singin' and Swingin' and GettingMerry Like Christmas. Both writers pay tribute to the array of talent the company possessed, from the veteran Cab Calloway as Sportin' Life to the then-unknown Leontyne Price as Bess.
Several years later Price and William Warfield recorded a disc of highlights for RCA, in which Price sings not only Bess but also Clara and Serena.
Fine though that selection is, it has none of the immediacy and energy of this broadcast from Berlin in September 1952. By then the company had lived with the work for a year.
There is a degree of improvisation from the chorus, the famous Eva Jessye Choir, as they enter into the spirit of the drama. Although it is a fairly complete version of the score, there are some cuts (for instance the Buzzard song), but where authentic performance practice is concerned this wins over every other recording.
William Warfield's Porgy is a noble achievement: as Angelou described him, 'he dragged the audience into his despair… his resonant voice straddled the music as he rode it'. Price's voice is at its youthful best – this is one of the earliest examples of her art on disc. In 'What you want wid Bess?' and 'I wants to stay here' she proves her star quality as well as her emotional commitment.
Helen Colbert as Clara opens the proceedings with a lush 'Summertime' and Helen Thigpen rings the Berlin rafters with 'My man's gone now'.
John McCurry is a fierce Crown, as Capote noted, 'high and heavy and somewhat forbidding'.
In those crucial cameos, Helen Dowdy hollers the Strawberry Woman's cry, and Ray Yates is the irresistible Crab Man (both created the roles). Cab Calloway's insinuating manner is just as effective in 'It ain't necessarily so' as it had been decades earlier in 'Kicking the Gong Around'. Some of the soloists are uncredited – who is the feisty Maria? The sound is clear, well defined; the recording favours the voices, but Alexander Smallens, who conducted the first performance in 1935, somehow persuades some really hot playing from the RIAS Light Orchestra. No one who admires Gershwin's work should ignore this unique document.

August 2008

William Warfield's Porgy is a noble achievement… Price's voice is at its youthful best… No one who admires Gershwin's work should ignore this unique document. As Angelou put it: "Even the chorus performed with such verve that a viewer could easily believe each singer was competing for a leading part."

Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

2 CDs

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