Page 18 - Phil opening night program digital final

Program Notes

barely 32.”
In fact, William Tell was his last opera. The massive semi-historical French work premiered in 1829 and
perfectly suited the anti-monarchist vibe in Paris (the 1832 June Rebellion Victor Hugo wrote about in Les
Misérables was on the horizon). Tell depicts a legendary archer who led the Swiss to throw off the yoke of
Austria in the early 1300s, and audiences rose to their feet in applause when Tell sang “Let Switzerland
breathe” in Act III. Rossini’s music builds to taut climaxes through soldier’s choruses, tense stand-offs with
the authorities, and a storm over Lake Lucerne.
The Overture heard today is almost 200 years old: it presents the best ten minutes from Rossin’s five-hour
opera. Listen for a gorgeous depiction of dawn over the Alps (low strings and timpani), an E minor tempest
over the lake (featuring trombones), a pastorale “Call to the Dairy Cows” (lyrical English horn and flute), and
a famous calvary charge of Swiss soldiers, played at a full gallop.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Fantasy on Porgy & Bess George Gershwin
for Violin and Orchestra (1898-1937)
arr. Alexander Courage

Alexander Courage (1919-2008) was a composer now best remembered for his theme and music for the
original Star Trek series. A graduate of Eastman and fellow student of Bernstein during the early years of
Tanglewood, Courage served as a World War II bandleader and brass player. His orchestrations are familiar
to fans of American classic cinema (Showboat, the can-can from Gigi, the barn raising in Seven Brides for
Seven Brothers, and major collaborations with John Wililams such as The Poseidon Adventure, Superman,
and Jurassic Park).
Courage composed the Fantasy heard tonight for violinist Joshua Bell. In a 1998 NPR interview, Bell
called it “the violin concerto that Gershwin never got around to writing.” It contains ten themes from
Gershwin’s opera, Porgy and Bess: “Prologue,” “It ain’t necessarily so,” “I got plenty of nuttin’,” “My man’s
gone,” “Summertime,” “There’s a boat,” “Bess, you is my woman,” “Oh, where’s my Bess?” and “I’m on my
way.” Its premiere performance was at Tanglewood in August of 1998 with Joshua Bell and the Boston Pops
Orchestra, conducted by John Williams.
George Gershwin was a notable jazz pianist-composer whose music has featured in the films American
in Paris and Funny Face. Born in Brooklyn to a family from Odessa (Ukraine), Saint Petersburg, and Vilnius
(Lithuania), the young composer remembered “growing up in the Yiddish Theater District” in the East
Village of Manhattan. After hearing a friend’s violin recital at the age of ten, George dove into piano lessons.
His main teacher was Joseph Hambitzer, the pianist in the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra. As a teenager, he
worked as an extra in the Yiddish Theater and earned $15 per week as a song plugger and sheet music
demonstrator on Tin Pan Alley (28th Street). By 1916, he was recording for Aeolian Company and Standard
Music Rolls, producing hundreds of piano rolls under his own name and the pseudonyms Fred Murtha and
Bert Wynn.

16 ~ Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra
16 ~ Pl y mout h Phil harmoni c Or che s t r a