Valerie Coleman Umoja: Anthem of Unity
Gershwin Concerto in F
Michael Lewin, piano
Mussorgsky, arr. Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition
The CSO concludes its 2023-2024 season with George Gershwin’s Concerto in F, featuring pianist Michael Lewin, and Ravel’s masterful orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
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In its original form, Umoja, the Swahili word for Unity and the first principle of the African Diaspora holiday Kwanzaa, was composed as a simple song for women's choir. It embodied a sense of 'tribal unity', through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional “call and response” form and the repetition of a memorable sing-song melody. Almost two decades later from the original, the orchestral version brings an expansion and sophistication to the short and sweet melody, beginning with sustained ethereal passages that float and shift from a bowed vibraphone, supporting the introduction of the melody by solo violin. The orchestral version was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Fall of 2019.
Compiled from vcolemanmusic.com.
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After attending the 1924 premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, the conductor Walter Damrosch (of the New York Symphony) commissioned George Gershwin to write a piano concerto to be performed by the New York Symphony with Gershwin as the soloist. Because of Gershwin’s obligations to several Broadway shows at the time, he was unable to begin compositional sketches until the following year. Gershwin completed the work in November 1925 and premiered it the following month. The Concerto in F was more tame and classically influenced than Rhapsody in Blue, and was a new experience for Gershwin as a composer in that he orchestrated it himself, unlike Rhapsody. Despite some critic’s luke-warm reactions to the premiere, attendees Sergei Rachmaninoff and Jascha Heifetz praised Gershwin for his artistry as soloist. Arnold Schoenberg, a contemporary of Gershwin, later praised the concerto in a posthumous tribute in 1938.
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Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874 as a ten-movement piano suite. Mussorgsky became close friends with the artist and architect Viktor Hartmann around 1868. Following Hartmann’s sudden death in 1873, the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg put on an exhibition of his work on which Mussorgsky based his Pictures. After years of the work being relatively unknown, Maurice Ravel made his orchestration in 1922 for Serge Koussevitzky, who was not previously familiar with the piece. Koussevitzky led the world premiere in Paris in the same year, and conducted the American premiere two years later with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, shortly after becoming music director. Following the popularity of Ravel’s orchestration, the original piano version became more commonly performed as a showpiece. Ravel’s arrangement, though not alone on the list of orchestral transcriptions of this piece, is the most widely performed version of this monumental, programmatic work.
