Littleton Symphony Orchestra

Inspired by the Greatness of America
Friday, March 26, 2010
Doors open at 7:00 PM - Performance begins 7:30 PM featuring David Korevaar, piano

Charles Griffes: The White Peacock
Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
John Williams: The Cowboy Overture
Ferde Grofe: On the Trail from the Grand Canyon Suite
Morton Gould: American Salute

Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) The White Peacock

Charles Tomlinson Griffes was born in New York City, the third of five children, on September 17, 1884. He grew up in Elmira, New York. After studying piano and organ in Elmira, he went to Berlin in 1903 to study composition with Engelbert Humperdinck at the Stern Conservatory.

Upon his return to the United States in 1907 he accepted a teaching position at the Hackley School for Boys in Tarrytown, New York, which he held until his death. Tarrytown was only about 30 miles from Manhattan, and Griffes spent much of his time in the city. During that time he became the best known Impressionist composer in America, modeling his work after the French and Russian impressionists. His primary influences were Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, and Mussorgsky.

The White Peacock is one of Griffes’ most famous works. Written as the first movement in his Roman Sketches for piano solo in 1915, it was orchestrated by the composer in 1919. Griffes was fascinated by a white peacock he had seen in Berlin, and was inspired by the poem “The White Peacock” by the English poet and novelist William Sharp (written under the pseudonym Fiona McLeod.) The poem concludes:

Here, as the breath, as the soul of this beauty,
White as a cloud through the heats of the noontide
Moves the White Peacock.

Ferde Grofé (1892-1972) On the Trail from the Grand Canyon Suite

Ferdinand Rudolf von Grofé was born in New York City on March 27, 1892. He came by his musicianship naturally. His father, Emil, was a baritone who specialized in light opera. His mother, Elsa, was a professional cellist and teacher. His maternal grandfather was also a cellist, with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and an uncle was concertmaster of the Los Angeles Symphony.

After his father’s death in 1899, Grofé‘s mother took him to Leipzig to study piano, viola, and composition. Back home in New York, Ferde left home at fourteen and held a variety of odd jobs, including milkman, truck driver, usher, newsboy, elevator operator, and iron factory worker. He also played piano in a bar for two dollars an hour. By the time he was 28, he had become Paul Whiteman’s chief arranger, and played piano in Whiteman’s band. In spite of his full-time jazz commitment, he continued to compose more classical music, including the Mississippi Suite, the Niagara Falls Suite, the Hudson River Suite, and the theme for the 1939 New York World’s fair. Movie music drew him in, and by 1945 he had sold his house in New Jersey and moved to Los Angeles, where he resided for the rest of his life.

The Grand Canyon Suite is comprised of five movements – Sunrise, Painted Desert, On the Trail, Sunset, and Cloudburst. On the Trail is by far the best-known. It depicts a trip to the bottom of the canyon by donkey. Beginning with a great hee-haw from the whole orchestra, the solo violin takes the braying theme and works it into a lurching melody depicting a donkey ride. This theme soon becomes the accompaniment for the main musical idea, a lovely melody first heard in the horns, then as a trombone solo. A music box at the hostel at the bottom of the trail is heard (from the celeste), the donkey knows there’s food ahead, and gallops to the end. The piece ends with a final outburst from the donkey.

George Gershwin (1898-1937) Rhapsody In Blue

Many biographies of George Gershwin emphasize the difficulties he faced growing up poor in Brooklyn, his lack of formal musical training, and the mind-numbing work he had to do plugging songs on Tin Pan Alley. But Gershwin had something that others lacked – an innate sense of rhythm and melody, and the audacity to challenge the musical establishment. The fact is that Gershwin was already recognized for his talent as a teenager. Swanee, written by the time he was twenty, sold over two million records, and that kind of success allowed him to live the lifestyle made famous during the “roaring twenties.” Later, his mature works were admired by Bartók, Ravel, Vaughn Williams, Schoenberg, and Webern.
Rhapsody in Blue, premiered in 1924, marked the start of the serious influence of American jazz on Western concert music. It was written for a concert at Aeolian Hall, promoted by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. The concert was called “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Gershwin knew that Whiteman has asked for “something”, but when he read in the New York Herald-Tribune on January 4th that he was working on “a jazz concerto” for the February 12th concert, he decided that he should probably get started. After all, he was in final rehearsals for the Boston tryoout of his new musical Sweet Little Devil, and preparing for a major recital with soprano Eva Gauthier.

Gershwin produced a two-piano version in three weeks, calling it American Rhapsody. His brother Ira wanted a more interesting title, and convinced George call the piece Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin lacked formal training in orchestration, so the job of finishing the piece went to Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s chief arranger. Produced first for jazz orchestra (what we call today a “big band”), Grofé also produced at least two versions for symphony orchestra. Members of Whiteman’s band contributed to the orchestration. The opening clarinet solo was originally written as a normal run, but first-chair clarinetist Ross Gorman would have none of that, introducing the glissando to a whole new generation of clarinetists.

The concerto does not have any formal structure – Leonard Bernstein said that it is a “string of … terrific tunes … stuck together with a thin paste of flour and water.” But from the opening clarinet cadenza, through the several variations on that famous main theme (think United Airlines), and on to the a most satisfying conclusion, the concerto demands your attention. These are, indeed, really terrific tunes.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Concerto for the Left Hand

Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961), brother of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, was an up-and-coming concert pianist in his late twenties when World War I began. Inducted into the army, he was shot in the elbow and captured by the Russians. His ruined right arm had to be amputated. At a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia, he resolved to continue his concert career despite the lack of an arm.

Wittgenstein was able to commission works for the left hand alone from many composers, including Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss, Eric Korngold, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, and, of course, Maurice Ravel. Ravel was already working his Concerto in G major when Wittgenstein approached him. The two were written concurrently, and while the Concerto for the Left Hand was started later, it was completed before the Concerto in G. They were Ravel’s last major compositions.

Ravel said of the piece, “In a work of this sort it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands.” An example of this is the pedal work. Wittgenstein had developed a strong pedal technique to attempt to compensate for his disability, and Ravel took full advantage of that in his very precise pedal markings.

The Concerto for the Left Hand begins darkly, with a dotted theme rising from the depths of the orchestra along with a bluesy melody from the horns, both over a sustained E in the bass. This builds to the piano’s dramatic introductory cadenza. Alternating romantic themes and a 6/8 march eventually become a scherzo, climaxing with one of the most difficult cadenzas in the literature. About halfway through the cadenza, the pianist is playing melodies in the upper and lower voices, with an accompaniment in between – all with just five fingers! The work concludes with the blues theme from the beginning.

John Williams (1932 – present ) The Cowboys Overture

John Williams composed the score for John Wayne’s movie The Cowboys in 1972. The Cowboys was one of Wayne’s last films, and one of his most popular. Williams called Wayne “Hollywood’s quintessential cowboy,” and he wrote quintessentially western music for the film. Williams said that “The movie required a vigorous musical score to accompany virtuoso horseback riding and calf roping.”

André Previn suggested that there was a concert overture waiting to be written from the film’s music, and finally, in 1980, Williams produced the work you will hear tonight. It was premiered by the Boston Pops, and, along with the theme from The Magnificent Seven, defines Hollywood cowboy music.

Morton Gould (1913-1996) American Salute

Morton Gould was born in Richmond Hill, Long Island, on December 10th, 1913. By the age of four he was playing piano and composing. He wrote, performed, and published the waltz Just Six at the age of six. At eight he began regular performances on radio station WOR, and at eight received a scholarship to the Institute of Musical Arts (now the Juilliard School.)

Gould became a staff musician at Radio City Music Hall at eighteen, and began working for NBC the next year. At 21, he was selected to be the conductor of the WOR Mutual radio network orchestra. Gould’s work combined jazz and popular elements in a mostly classical style, and he was championed by Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Arturo Toscanini, and Sir George Solti.

American Salute is a theme and variations based on the Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home. It was written for a national radio broadcast on the Mutual Radio Network on Lincoln’s birthday, 1942. Gould wrote, “I have attempted a very simple and direct translation in orchestral idiom of this vital tune. There is nothing much that can be said about the structure or the treatment because I think it is what you might call “self-auditory.”

American Salute is Gould’s most-performed work. It was on the program of a concert by the United States Military Academy Concert Band which Gould attended on the last evening of his life.