SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Glorious Gershwin: Viv McLean (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Ziegler, Cadogan Hall, London, 14.8.2008 (BBr)

Robert Russell Bennett: Gershwin in Hollywood

George Gershwin: Promenade: Walking the Dog (1937)

Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

Who Cares? (adapted and orchestrated from the Gershwin Songbook by Hershey Kay)


A bright and breezy concert from a pops–sized RPO, led by Robert Ziegler who, dressed in buttoned double breasted white jacket, looked for all the world like a character from The Great Gatsby. A good time was had by all.

Bennett is best known for his orchestrations of Broadway and Hollywood musicals, and this has overshadowed his own, serious, work. There are some very interesting works for wind band, a medium he discovered towards the end of his life. Gershwin in Hollywood is one of the many pot–pourris he concocted from the works of composers such as Gershwin, Kern and Richard Rodgers, the most famous being the Symphonic Picture based on music from Porgy and Bess. Gershwin’s time in Hollywood was short, due to his early death, so Bennett didn’t have a lot of material to work with and therefore he used music from a posthumous film – The Shocking Miss Pilgrim – as well as well known songs from A Damsel in Distress and Shall We Dance? It was a pleasant enough concoction but, ultimately, it lacked any real substance.

The marvelous Promenade: Walking the Dog derives from a scene in Shall We Dance where, yet again, Fred is trying to befriend Ginger, this time on board ship. He discovers that she walks her dog on the deck each day so he borrows an animal and tries to woo her through canine friendship. This humorous miniature accompanies his cack–handed attempts at romance and  this performance was too heavy handed and po–faced to make the real impression it should. Remember, when Fred Astaire walked he was really dancing and this piece is cleverly designed to evoke that movement perfectly.

Rhapsody in Blue is too famous these days and we take it for granted. Viv McLean is a fine young pianist who has all the verve and panache to bring off this old war horse. Unfortunately, the music was pulled around, distorting the lines and there was little style. In order to make Gershwin sound “jazzy” all you have to do is play the notes exactly as he wrote them, too many performers insist on adding little grace notes which, mistakenly, they think adds to the jazziness. This is a false belief – even that great Gershwin enthusiast Leonard Bernstein is guilty of this in his recordings of the piece. I am sorry to report that McLean did all of these things. In his song By Strauß, Ira Gershwin wrote in the lyric that “…Gershwin keeps pounding on tin…” This performance, unfortunately, lived up to that epithet.

After the interval the orchestra played an arrangement of Gershwin songs by Hershey Kay – who also orchestrated Candide and On the Town for Bernstein – to create a Gershwin ballet for Balanchine. In general the songs were well presented by Kay – he often used the verses to the songs, which are not heard as often as they should be – but they all sounded the same; there was insufficient variety. For instance, all but one of the songs ended with a winding down of the music and a loud bang – which almost always elicited rapturous applause.

The Royal Philharmonic played well, the trumpet and trombones especially, sounding like a big band with a full yet mellow tone. The strings were underused. For me, this was all too rough and ready a performance, lacking subtlety, but it pleased a packed audience which went wild with enthusiasm, so who am I to comment?

Bob Briggs


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