Not As Good As All That

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 8

Not As Good As All That

N the U.S.A. Symphony Programmes which we have. been hearing lately from New Zealand stations, there are generally two or three long symphonic items, followed by some new work, usually by an American composer. In this way we have been introducéd to several interesting works which we might not otherwise have heard at all: "A Lincoln Portrait" and "Song of Freedom" among others. I was interested, however, to see Gershwin occupying the tail-end of one of these programmes, Coming after Cimarosa and Debussy, a modern

American composer must be more than good to hold his own; I don’t think Gershwin is as good as all that. He was referred to as "the late George Gershwin" (imagine the great composers. being spoken of as "the late Frederic Chopin," "the late Sebastian Bach"). The work offered was "An American in Paris," .which doesn’t appeal as music alone, but needs a literary association te put its message over; moreover, the jazz idiom is too restricted, melodically and harmonically, to support a long symphonic movement. Later on in the evening we had "Overture to a Picaresque Comedy" by Arnold Bax, and beside the effectively simple orchestration of this work, the Gershwin seemed forced and overelaborate.