Pianist and Composer Conrad Tao

TAO'S GERSHWIN AT SRS CONCERT IN WEILL HALL

Perhaps one might ask what is “new” and what is “old,” music. Should we set an arbitrary division at, say, 100 years? Those of us who came of age in the 1960s might have considered works by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, or Wagner as “old” music, yet at that time much of it was less, some much less, than 100 years. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, a perennial favorite in the symphonic repertoire, is probably still considered as contemporary music by many listeners, yet this year it's celebrating its centenary. With soloist Conrad Tao, it formed the centerpiece of the Santa Rosa Symphony's last regular season concert set, and the May 13 performance is reviewed here.

The evening began with Gershwin's five-movement “Catfish Row” suite excerpted from his 1935 opera, “Porgy and Bess.” Not long after the premiere, Gershwin presented a suite of music from the opera at concerts during the next two years, but the score was lost after his death in 1937. In 1942 Gershwin's friend Robert Russell Bennet prepared selections of the opera's most popular themes, and this was published as “Porgy and Bess, a Symphonic Picture.” It wasn't until 1958 that original score was rediscovered in his brother Ira Gershwin's home and newly titled “Catfish Row” to distinguish it from the Bennet version. It passes up some of the most familiar opera songs in favor of some of its more challenging and musically sophisticated sections.

Where the Symphonic Picture begins quietly, Catfish Row jumps right in with the thrilling overture to the opera, with its famed 32 bar xylophone obbligato flawlessly executed by percussionist Allen Biggs, and moves on to Jazzbo Brown's Piano Blues, which was cut from the opera until a 1976 revival, and here performed by pianist Kymry Esainko. Other principal players were also featured, with the introduction of Summertime played by Joseph Edelberg. The orchestra joined by a banjo soloist for Porgy's song I Got Plenty of Nuttin, and a lovely solo by cellist Adell-Akiko Kearns seguing into Bess, You Is My Woman Now. The sometimes atonal fugue that follows (music accompanying the death of the character Crown in act 3 of the opera) showed a level of contrapuntal complexity that might have passed unnoticed during an opera performance, while string glissandos portrayed the wind in the opera's hurricane sequence. The suite ends with Oh, Lawd, I'm On My Way from the final scene. It was an impressive performance with conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong capturing the fine details and harmonies that might escape notice when played by the smaller pit orchestra of an opera performance.

In 1924 bandleader Paul Whiteman arranged an ambitious An Experiment in Modern Music concert in New York City, and among the 25 selections was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, composed initially for two pianos. It premiered on February 12, 1924, with Gershwin as soloist, and was later reorchestrated for full symphony orchestra by Ferde Grofé, and it’s the commonly performed version.

Mr. Lecce-Chong chose to perform the original 23-piece jazz band arrangement, and the ensemble was joined by pianist Conrad Tao. I found this orchestration much more in keeping with the “jazz age” aesthetic of the piece, the sparse orchestration allows individual players the possibilities of the jazz vernacular, for example playing “on the front or back edge of the beat” which would only muddy the playing of a large symphony section. There was a difficult banjo part, played by Derek Johnson.

The Rhapsody opened with the famous clarinet trill run and klezmeric wail performed by Roy Zajac. Mr. Tao's playing was dramatic, often with exaggerated rubato, sometimes even pausing entirely for long seconds. His playing alternated between sensitive in the quieter exchanges with the band and little short of volcanic, at one point near the middle of the piece even abandoning the notated cadenza altogether for a few seconds of pure cacophony. It was an exciting performance, and at the final chord the near-capacity audience in Weill Hall leaped to their feet for an immediate and extended standing ovation and four curtain calls.

Following intermission the stage setup remained the same for Mr. Tao's own Concerto for Piano and Jazz orchestra (“Flung Out”), commissioned by the Symphony and received its world premiere May 11. Before beginning the composer spoke to the audience, saying that while the piece was in no way an imitation of Gershwin, its choice of the same jazz band orchestration an intentional homage, and also saying he took inspiration from the rhythms, music, and shared experience of the New York dance club scene. Some Gershwin influence could be heard in various sections, while others seemed to suggest musical ideas ranging from pianists Bill Evans, Art Tatum and Keith Jarrett, and also to the harmonies and dialogues between piano and wind chorale typical of Rachmaninoff. However, the work remained very much Mr. Tao's own, and was received by the audience with yet another standing ovation, if not as instantaneous or as prolonged as that for the Rhapsody.

There was an encore for the pianist, a Tatum inspired transcription of the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the 1939 movie Wizard of Oz.

The final work on the program was another orchestral jazz piece, Ellington's three movement suite “Black, Brown, and Beige,” which premiered in 1943. Originally written as a 45 minute long jazz symphony, the movements of the approximately 20-minute suite include “Black,” which starts with a work song reminiscent of slave labor melodies and field shouts, then a spiritual-like “Come Sunday” which has become a jazz standard ballad and which was arranged in a vocal version, and a final “Light” segment.

The second movement was played up-tempo and celebrates both traditional big band sounds and the first hints of later “cool” jazz. The performance was the least exciting work on the program, though expertly performed, but in its overall scope not all that different from the sort of big band and film score recordings familiar to many. It would be interesting to hear a performance of the full-length version of what Ellington called “a tone parallel to the history of the American Negro.”