George Gershwin - Porgy and Bess; Blue Monday (Erich Kunzel)

Information

Composer: George Gershwin

• Porgy and Bess (Selections)
• Blue Monday (Opera a la Afro-American)

Gregg Baker; Sebronette Barnes; Harolyn Blackwell

Angela Brown; William Henry Caldwell; Cab Halloway

Lawrence Craig; Marquita Lister

Kirk Walker; Thomas Young

Central State University Chorus

Cincinnati Pops Orchestra

Erich Kunzel, conductor

Date: 1998

Label: Telarc

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Review

The big news here is the first recording of a duet, “Lonely boy”, for Bess and Serena, dropped from the score by Gershwin in favour of a reprise of “Summertime”. With a strange pre-echo of the Nurses’ Duet in Weill’s Street Scene, it is just a pleasant rock-a-bye rhythm excuse for the two girls to show off their voices. Any enterprising producer of Porgy and Bess will surely want to include it in future.

Apart from that, the selection from the opera includes most of the famous numbers. Gregg Baker was a magnificent Crown in the 1986 Glyndebourne production but here sings both Porgy and and Jake – with his great stage presence and striking looks he’s a singer we ought to hear more from. Marquita Lister’s Bess is similarly assured and she adds a little fioritura to her account of “I wants to stay here” that is very effective. Harolyn Blackwell, also a veteran of the Glyndebourne staging, repeats her well-known “Summertime”.

Veteran doesn’t seem an adequate word to describe the late Cab Calloway who contributes a typically eccentric “It ain’t necessarily so”. This must have been one of his last records, and it’s a stylish, valedictory effort. Calloway was the Sportin’ Life in the famous 1950s production of Porgy that introduced the work to London, and he sang it on disc twice (RCA and Sony – both nla).

It’s an excellent idea to couple the Porgy extracts with Gershwin’s early one-act opera, Blue Monday. Although its plot is absurd and Buddy Henderson’s lyrics no match for those provided for Gershwin’s shows by his brother, Ira, it has so many little points of stylistic and harmonic similarity to Porgy that to hear them side by side is an instructive experience. This is the third recording of Blue Monday, but the first to use the original orchestrations by Will Vodery, rather than the later arrangements when the piece was retitled 135th Street. Baker and Lister both give spirited performances and Thomas Young does what he can with the big song, “I want to see my mother”. Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra give their all.

— Patrick O'Connor

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George Gershwin (26 September 1898 – 11 July 1937) was a pivotal American composer who combined classical training with popular styles such as ragtime and jazz. Collaborating closely with his brother Ira, Gershwin produced enduring Broadway works and songs, including Lady, Be Good and I Got Rhythm. His concert pieces, Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess, blended jazz idioms with classical forms and gained international acclaim. Though his classical status remains debated, Gershwin is widely regarded as a significant musical innovator whose influence crossed genres and continents.

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Erich Kunzel (21 March 1935 – 1 September 2009) was an American conductor best known for his leadership of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Educated at Dartmouth, Harvard and Brown, he studied under Pierre Monteux and later joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Kunzel also served as a frequent guest conductor with major orchestras across the United States, including the Boston Pops, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras. His recordings with the Cincinnati Pops achieved unprecedented commercial success, with dozens of albums topping classical crossover charts.

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