Concerto in F (Gershwin)

Concerto in F is a composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra which is closer in form to a traditional concerto than the earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue. It was written in 1925 on a commission from the conductor and director Walter Damrosch.

Damrosch had been present at the February 12, 1924 concert arranged and conducted by Paul Whiteman at Aeolian Hall titled An Experiment in Modern Music which became famous for the premiere of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, for which the composer performed the piano solo. The day after the concert, Damrosch contacted Gershwin to commission from him a full-scale piano concerto for the New York Symphony Orchestra, closer in form to a classical concerto and orchestrated by the composer. Although Gershwin would later recieve formal training and lessons from influential figures like Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger and Arnold Schoenberg in advanced composition, harmony and orchestration, in 1925 Gershwin, without such training and a deadline to complete the work, bought books on theory, concerto form and orchestration and tought himself the skills needed. Because of contractual obligations for three different Broadway musicals, he was not able to begin sketching ideas until May of 1925. He began the two-piano score on July 22 after returning from a trip to London, and the original drafts were entitled New York Concerto. The first movement was written in July, the second in August, and the third in September. Gershwin completed the full orchestrations on November 10 (this is supposedly the first work that he ever orchestrated).

Gershwin hired a 60-piece orchestra to run through his first draft in November of 1925. Damrosch attended and gave Gershwin advice, and he thereafter made a few cuts and revisions. The premiere performance was on 3 December 1925 in New York's Carnegie Hall by the New York Symphony Orchestra with Damrosch conducting (three years later the orchestra would merge with the Philharmonic Symphony Society into the now-famous New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and one of the new orchestra's first projects was the commission and December 1928 premiere of Gershwin's next symphonic work An American in Paris) and Gershwin playing the piano solo. The concert was sold out and the concerto was very well received by the general public. However, the reviews were mixed with many critics unable to classify it as jazz or classical. Indeed, there was a great variety of opinion among Gershwin's contemporaries; Igor Stravinsky thought the work was one of genius, whereas Sergei Prokofiev disliked it intensely.

The concerto is in the traditional three movements:

1. Allegro
2. Adagio - Andante con moto
3. Allegro agitato

There are strong thematic links between the outer movements, while the second movement is the most obviously jazz influenced.

The Concerto in F shows considerable development in Gershwin's compositional technique namely because he orchestrated the entire work himself, unlike the Rhapsody in Blue which was done by Ferde Grofé, the orchestrator for Paul Whiteman's orchestra. The English composer William Walton commented that he adored Gershwin's orchestration of the concerto, he himself being a famous orchestrator. Gershwin scored his concerto for 2 flutes and a piccolo, 2 oboes and an English horn, 2 B flat clarinets and a B flat bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns in F, 3 B flat trumpets, 3 trombones and a tuba, 3 timpani (one player), 3 percussionists (first player: bass drum, bells, xylophone; second player: snare drum with regular and brush sticks, wood block, slapstick; third player: crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, triangle), solo piano and strings.

The first movement features a recurring idea of a popular dance of the period, the Charleston and is clearly of the jazz idiom but is also written in a mature sonata form. It also plays heavily on an open octave with a fifth in between. This pattern is the very first thing played, as the melody, and it recurs as a bass harmony throughout the first and third movements. Another pattern in both the first and third movements is using the dominant seventh chord as a scale. This is used for a large part of melody and harmony. The second movement is the blues, with a slow begining, a faster piano part, and a gradual build untill near the end. When the full orchestra and piano are playing loud and it seems the piece will come to a crashing finish, everything pulls back to the original quiet melody and ends peacefuly. The final movement is a pulsating, energetic finale that features the dominant seventh melody and the main melody from the first movement, the blues melody from the second movement, and a melody of it's own. One section, at the Grandioso, is exactly the same as the corresponding section in the first movement, but this time, the scales at the end lead back into the tremulendo-like patterns from the begining. The third movement ends by pulling together the original octave and fifth pattern with the dominant seventh scale in octaves on the piano; the orchestra crescendos and the concerto ends with a bang. A performance of the complete work lasts around thirty minutes.

Sources

• Kennedy Center/National Symphony Program Notes
• San Francisco Symphony - Program Notes