Page 23 - Phil 2024-2025 opening night digital program

tears. If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions
musically expressed, it succeeds.”

Gershwin and his brother Ira spent three months in Paris shortly after a 1928 New
York City performance of his American Rhapsody, retitled Rhapsody in Blue. Ravel was
the guest of honor at this party, and he returned the favor by welcoming the brothers
to Paris and paid Gershwin the compliment of imitation in his Piano Concerto in G the
following year. On an earlier visit Gershwin had dashed off a piece that he noted was
“very Parisienne.” During and after his 1928 visit to Paris, he expanded the fragment into
An American in Paris, a “rhapsodic ballet,” which “depicts the impression of an American
visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and
absorbs the French atmosphere.” The central section is a musical depiction of the young
American’s homesickness for America, which quickly passes.
Although Ferde Grofé (1892-1972), chief arranger for bandleader Paul Whiteman from
1920-1932, orchestrated Gershwin’s Rhapsody, Gershwin himself carefully noted that
the orchestration of An American in Paris was all his own work. He called for three
saxophones in addition to standard triple winds, a celeste, Parisian taxi horns, and extra
percussion. (The published version was slightly revised by Frank Campbell-Watson.)
Since Rhapsody in Blue, inspired by American trains and the sounds of New York City,
had become Gershwin’s musical calling card, selling millions of copies in Europe and
even becoming a Viennese café standard of the 1920s, Gershwin gave a special
interview with Musical America about his new Lisztian tone poem: “The opening part
will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and the Six [Les Six],
though all the themes are original,” a clear signal that he rightly considered himself a
peer of his Parisian art-music contemporaries such as Darius Milhaud.
The piece is framed by an opening maxixe, a fashionable Brazilian dance depicting
the bustle of Paris through the repetition of short rhythmic cells. Gershwin repeated
his successful emphasis on tuned percussion from the Rhapsody and purchased a set
of distinctive taxi-horns (required by the composer for Walter Damrosch’s New York
Philharmonic premiere of the work). A bluesy violin cadenza leads us to the heart of the
city’s club culture. Musical America records the composer’s intent: “Our American friend,
perhaps after strolling into a café and having a couple of drinks, has succumbed to a
spasm of homesickness. The harmony here is both more intense and simpler than in the
preceding pages. This blues rises to a climax, followed by a coda in which the spirit of
the music returns to the vivacity and bubbling exuberance of the opening part with its
impression of Paris.”

American in Paris premiered on December 12, 1928 in Carnegie Hall. Recent books on
the composer include an intimate personal history by Joan Peyser (2006), a document-
based biography by Howard Pollack (2007), a correspondence-based memoir by
Richard Crawford (2019). Producers Martin Scorsese and Irwin Winkler are currently in
pre-production on a Gershwin-based musical-biopic film to be directed by John Carney
(with the working title Fascinating Rhythm).

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Season 2024/25