Gershwin in Wellington

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 813, 25 February 1955, Page 21

Gershwin in Wellington

\V HAT makes a piece of music popular? George GérshWin’s Rhapsody in Blue, for instance, which the National Orchestra is to play in the Wellington Proms with Maurice Till as solo pianist (YA link, 3YZ and 4YZ, March 7), The Orchestra has played it, too, in Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland, and although I haven't yet heard any comments about these performances, I’d hazard a guess that Rhapsody in Blue hit the jackpot with these audiences as it has done ever since that first memorable performance by Paul Whiteman and his band at Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924, Gershwin’s first storming of the serious coneest hall scaled the ramparts of criticism ,and hit the headlines. Recorded, published and performed again and again, Rhapsody in Blue brought in its composer over a million dollars. I¢ has been played on pretty well everything from a Wurlitzer to a harmonica. Toscanini has put it in a programme and it has been arranged to accompany a tap dance. For 30 years Rhapsody in Blue has continued to win friends and maybe to influence people, too, just as its composer did in his all too short life. That is half the secret of the music’s success. The Rhapsody is Gershwin’s personal rhapsody. Into it he put some of the tunes and the rhythms that he himself enjoyed playing, singing or dancing. And because Gershwin was a very likeable young man, a real regular guy, his music comes out that way. These are the tunes and the rhythms that every young American in 1924 would have liked to have written, played

and sung. And, with a little flavour of nostalgia, that goes for the young American today, too; and, as the young in most parts are inclined to sentimentality, Rhapsody in Blué has its many fans in other countries, not the least New Zealand. But don’t forget, nevertheless, that this music is written with a flare. The other half of its popularity is the competency of the writing, even although Gershwin had to get someone else to do the orchestration for him. Although poles apart from the Rhapsody, Sibelius’s Finlandia (2YC, March 5) owes some of its popularity to much the same reasons. First, it was written by a master craftsman of the orchestra; and then again, it struck a chord in the hearts of Sibelius’s compatriots and in those of many others with a spark of the patriotic spirit waiting to be fanned. Written in 1899, when Finland was shaking its mane as Russia pulled its tail, Finlandia was the finale of a suite which Sibelius called Finland Awakes It wasn’t just the loud and stirring brass that awoke the Finns to such fervour that the Russians were moved to ban performances. In the themes-which, in- cidentally, Sibelius states are not folk tunes but his own-the composer found the voice of the Finnish people. In the same programme by the Orchestra, Donald Munro will sing Three Traditional Sea Songs, by Ashley Heenan, of Wellington (2YC, March 5). These songs, which have been published by Chester, were written two years ago for Donald Munro, Based on and a¥ising from the origina] traditional airs, they have ah engaging quality which should win them popularity too.

Owen

Jensen