Concerto in F (Gershwin)
Damrosch had been present at the February 12, 1924 concert arranged and conducted by Paul Whiteman at Aeolian Hall in New York City titled An Experiment in Modern Music which became famous for the premiere of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, in which the composer performed the piano solo.This had been arranged through the Australian composer and teacher Ernest Hutcheson, who offered seclusion for Gershwin at Chautauqua, where his quarters were declared off limits to everyone until 4 p.m. daily.The climax is reached at the Grandioso, in which the orchestra resounds the piano's original melody, accompanied by a large triplet figure in the soloist.A faster section featuring the piano follows, building gradually until near the end, at which point the piece deceptively pulls back to the original melody, now given to the flute.A false climax is found in a Grandioso section identical to that of the first movement, which in turn evolves into another build to the true pinnacle of the concerto, again dominated by the F Major 6 chord, bringing the piece to a close.The timpani begins the movement with wham-bok beats, then the orchestra introduces a pentatonic melody accompanied by the Charleston in the horns and percussion.It is repeated again with an orchestral counter-melody played by the cellos and strings at the same time, followed by pentatonic runs in the piano and continuing accompaniment in the orchestra.After the climax, Gershwin combines Charleston, pentatonic melody and fast-paced triplets to modulate from one key to another before reintroducing another sultry variation in D-Flat major.The movement ends with the piano playing the theme from the beginning, soft flute and string accompaniment, and a D-Flat Major cadence.The rat-a-tat rhythm returns, bridging the blues theme and the repeated note melody from the second movement, played by the orchestra.The same forces presented several performances very soon after—two more in New York, and one each in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, preceding another at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 16 January 1926.… He only feels he has something to say and he says it.Damrosch himself provided a note praising Gershwin's work:[11] Various composers have been walking around jazz like a cat around a plate of soup, waiting for it to cool off so that they could enjoy it without burning their tongues, hitherto accustomed only to the more tepid liquids distilled by cooks of the classical school.has danced her way around the world ... but for all her travels and sweeping popularity, she has encountered no knight who could lift her to a level that would enable her to be received as a respectable member of musical circles.George Gershwin seems to have accomplished this miracle ... boldly by dressing his extremely independent and up-to-date young lady in the classic garb of a concerto.He is the Prince who has taken Cinderella by the hand and openly proclaimed her a princess to the astonished world, no doubt to the fury of her envious sisters.A performance of the 3rd movement of the concerto is featured during a humorous fantasy sequence in the film An American in Paris (1951).In one of the film's many musical numbers, Oscar Levant's character Adam Cook, a struggling pianist, daydreams that he is performing the concerto for a gala audience in a concert hall.