Gershwin conducting

Isaac Goldberg described Gershwin’s enthusiasm when conducting:

He conducted not just with his baton, but with his cigar, his shoulders, his hips, his eyes and whatnot.  Nothing but a sense of propriety keeps him from leaping over the footlights and getting right into the show himself.

Cited in: Greenberg, Rodney (2008) George Gershwin.  New York: Phaidon Press, p.111.


Posted

in

by


Featured Content

Beethoven’s compositional process
Beethoven was revising Fidelio when he wrote to Georg Freiedrich Treitschke (who was helping to revise the libretto) (1): Now, of course, everything has to be done at once; and I could composer something new far more quickly than patch up the old with something new, as I am now doing. For my custom when I […]
Inner-most feelings can be expressed in music
Taneyev was critical of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Tchaikovsky’s response ended with: “I can see you laughing as you read all of this, you sceptic and mocking-bird.  In spite of your great love of music it seems you still can’t believe that a man can express his inmost feelings in his compositions.  You just wait!” Cited […]
The personality of George Gershwin
Isaac Goldberg, a friend of George Gershwin, described the composer’s personality: HE was as simple, as unaffected, as modest, and as charming a youth as one could desire to meet. There was nothing about him that was forbidding. He wore his unprecedented celebrity as lightly as if it were a cane – that cane which […]
Imagination
“Imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world’s supreme good.” – Pascal Blaise, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. C. Prendergast, A history of modern French literature: from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2017, p. 237.
A good performance
A good performance is one that moves me. But it is not only the passion and emotion expressed in a performance that move me, it is also allowing the clarity of the structure, as well as the different characters, to shine through, a well-judged balance, a sense of architecture of the whole piece and, at […]
Give Thanks to the Lord – Psalm 105 (106)
Title: Give thanks to the Lord Text: Psalm 105 (106) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano/organ Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLE:    
Symbolism
Music stirred him
“Music had stirred him like that.  Music had troubled him many times.  But music was not articulate.  It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey.
What we play
“What we play is life.” Louis Armstrong, Jazz musician Cited at: Satchmo, “Louis Armstrong Quotes and Tributes.” https://www.satchmo.com/louisarmstrong/quotes.html, accessed 6 September 2021.
Abstraction XVII
Title: Abstraction XVIIComposer: Greg SmithInstrumentation: PianoProduct medium: PDF scoreRelated products: – Abstraction XVII (MP3 recording)