August 15
Another mind-blowing Prom
Blimey. Has there been a more exciting period in the history of music than the mid-twentieth century in America? Jazz in all its variants, the whole spectrum of blues and folk music, the invention of the movie soundtrack, the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll and R and B, the golden age of the stage and movie musical, the explosion of recorded music and all those super-literate songwriters on the coasts: Porter, Gershwin, Hammerstein et al.
And if that wasn’t enough there were the boatloads of bewildered European blow-ins: Stravinsky, Hindemith, Korngold, Martinu and the rest, many of whom sucked up this new brash and melodic American stuff freely and found work writing movie soundtracks for Hollywood (what an experience that must have been).
Stravinsky, for instance, who, let’s not forget, lived at an address in Hollywood for decades. Last night’s BBC SSO Prom opened with his Jazz-soaked Petrushka from 1947 and set it against some dances from Bernstein’s On The Town and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue complete with contributions from Marcus Roberts’ Jazz trio.
The whole thing was intoxicating. And if any of your pompous classical mates try to tell you that Gershwin’s a lightweight or that Rhapsody in Blue’s just a showtune, sit them in front of the Beeb’s listen again function and watch them wake up to this gorgeous collision of Broadway and European symphonic culture. Listen again here (for a few more days only).
(I didn’t post this to speechification.com because it’s not really speech radio but I could easily have posted the fascinating interval talk which is about Bernstein’s pioneering education work).