Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Rhapsody in Blue

Leonard Pennario Piano Bridge Master

He liked his keys and he liked his cards. One hundred years ago today, pianist and bridge master Leonard Pennario was born in Buffalo, New York.

Pennario gave his first public performance in a department store there at the age of 7. After his father’s shoe business collapsed during the Great Depression, he and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 10. Los Angeles was to remain his base of operations for the rest of his career, until his retirement in 2005.

Pennario was a born musician with an outstanding memory. At the age of 12, he was recommended by Sir Eugene Goossens to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as a substitute for an ailing pianist. Asked if he knew Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Pennario said yes, when in fact he had never even heard it. He was able to learn the piece in six days, without missing any school. His debut was a triumph and the beginning of an extraordinary career.

He rose to prominence without ever attending a music college or entering a piano competition. He did, however, take lessons from Isabelle Vengerova, whose other students included Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Gary Graffman, and Abbey Simon. He also studied composition with Ernst Toch at the University of Southern California.

He served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, and made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski, in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, while still in uniform, in 1943.

Temperamentally, he was the polar opposite of Glenn Gould, who, early on, abandoned public concertizing, in favor of the hermetic environment of the recording studio, or even Vladimir Horowitz who suffered harrowing bouts of stage fright. Pennario adored performing before an audience, and his magnetism and self-confidence were evident to those who were lucky enough to have heard him live. His was an unshakeable technique, characterized by clarity, speed, and accuracy, combined with a sense of spontaneity and soulfulness.

His recordings of Gershwin and Rachmaninoff have seldom, if ever, been out of the catalogue. His “Rhapsody in Blue” was one of the most popular of all classical LPs, and he was the first pianist after the composer to record all the Rachmaninoff concertos. In 1959, he was declared the best-selling American pianist. He was also the first to record the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. In all, he made over 60 records.

Pennario’s association with Hollywood unsettled some musical elitists, especially when he recorded an album like “Concertos Under the Stars,” featuring Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” among other potboilers, or when he adapted his own “Midnight on the Cliffs” for the Doris Day film “Julie.” He dated Elizabeth Taylor and palled around with Judy Garland. He was an early champion of the concert music of Academy Award-winning film composer Miklós Rózsa. In the meantime, he was also recording piano trios with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.

In addition to being an exceptional pianist, he was an accomplished card player. He discovered bridge in 1965, formed a celebrity quartet with Don Adams (of “Get Smart”), band leader Les Brown, and Joan Benny (Jack Benny’s daughter), and under the tutelage of his friend, columnist Alfred Sheinwold, attained an enviable level of expertise. In fact, he became a Life Master in tournament bridge, and earned a listing in the Official Encyclopedia of Bridge.

Apparently, Sheinwold shared Pennario’s passion for music. During their get-togethers the pianist would sometimes accompany him in lieder of Schubert and Brahms. Said Pennario, “He had a fine tenor voice… I would accompany him and he in turn would partner me in tournaments. Each of us felt he had the better deal!”

In the late 1990s, the onset of Parkinson’s Disease forced Pennario into retirement. Bridge became the solace of his old age. He died in La Jolla, California, on June 28, 2008, at the age of 83.

Fondly remembering Leonard Pennario on the 100th anniversary of his birth!

“Rhapsody in Blue”

With Fiedler and the Boston Pops: Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” César Franck’s “Symphonic Variations,” and Henry Charles Litolff’s Scherzo from the Concerto Symphonique No. 4

Live performance of Miklós Rózsa’s Piano Concerto, with post-performance interview

Trios with Heifetz and Piatigorsky

“Midnight on the Cliffs”

On Kraft Music Hall with Nelson Eddy in 1947

July 9, 2024
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at 100

The most widely-recognized of American classics? Perhaps. Next to “Fanfare for the Common Man” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” I can think of few others. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” is 100 today.

I once heard it performed on a New Year’s Day concert in Milan. As late as the mid ‘90s, it seemed European musicians still hadn’t acquired that innate ability to swing. But the world’s a lot smaller place now, and they seem to have gotten it.

Here’s the first recording, with Gershwin at the piano and Paul Whiteman conducting. The work is abridged and played a little faster than we’re accustomed to hearing today, in large part to be able to fit it onto two sides of a 12-inch 78 rpm record.

The first recording I acquired, on LP, was with Leonard Bernstein as conductor and pianist with the New York Philharmonic, made for Columbia Records in 1964. The performance really is more expansive than most. As the years went by, I enjoyed hearing different takes on the piece, some of them attempting to recreate its original jazz band debut.

The work has been dismissed by cognoscenti as corny. In 1934, composer Constant Lambert derided it as “neither good jazz nor good Liszt.” As recently as two weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article under the title “The Worst Masterpiece,” with pianist Ethan Iverson making a straw man argument that Duke Ellington was a more important composer. Of course the “Rhapsody” is not true jazz, any more than Brahms’ Hungarian riffs could be construed as authentic Hungarian music. But it is 100 percent American.

“Rhapsody in Blue” is one of those rare pieces of classical music whose appeal transcends genre. I have an uncle, who is by no means a classical music person, who is obsessed with the work. It’s a crowd-pleaser, and deservedly so. If anything, its winning combination of optimism, energy, and naiveté reminds us of America’s “better angels” (a phrase I borrow from Lincoln on his birthday). The work is as refreshing now as it ever was, even if, one hundred years on, it seems more and more like a distant dream. It’s still a dream to be celebrated.

Bernstein, 1964

Bernstein live, 1976

Michael Tilson Thomas’ quite different conception

Incorporating Gershwin’s 1925 piano roll

Peter Nero and the Philly Pops at Independence Hall

In Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”

Paul Whiteman, who conducted the premiere of “Rhapsody in Blue,” introduces and leads it here, beginning at the 51-minute mark (with interlude for “voodoo drums???”) in the insane, pre-Code curio, “King of Jazz” (1930). Just don’t watch it too close to bed!

Live footage of Gershwin playing “I Got Rhythm” in 1931

PHOTO: (left to right) Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s orchestrator and later composer of the “Grand Canyon Suite;” Gershwin at the piano; theatrical impresario Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel; and Whiteman, with his baton

February 12, 2024
Remembering Peter Nero Philly Pops Legend

This Nero didn’t play as Philly burned.

Peter Nero, who conducted the Philly Pops for 34 years, is dead. At the orchestra’s founding in 1979, it was Nero’s intention to take on Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. For decades, Boston had been ensconced as the very model of a modern major pops orchestra. With a touch of hubris, Nero stated at the time, “I’d like to beat the pants off them.” Granted, by then, Fiedler was tottering into the homestretch of a 50-year career as Boston’s music director. Nevertheless, the pants stayed on. Nero left the Philly Pops in 2013, when the orchestra could no longer afford his salary.

A multifaceted musician, Nero started out as a piano prodigy. He earned the respect of no less than Vladimir Horowitz, and Roy Charles would cite him as one of his favorite pianists, alongside Art Tatum.

It was hearing Tatum that changed the course of Nero’s life. He fell in love with jazz and determined not to be pigeonholed, instead embracing and often combining music from a variety of genres. His enthusiasms would carry him from piano competitions to smoky jazz clubs to posh concert halls to open-air band stands before audiences numbering in the thousands.

He performed “Rhapsody in Blue” with Paul Whiteman, who had introduced the piece with George Gershwin at the piano. Nero was celebrated as a premier interpreter of Gershwin’s music.

His first album for RCA, “Piano Forte” (1961), was a hit, earning him a Grammy for Best New Artist. The next year, he would garner another, for Best Performance by an Orchestra or Instrumentalist with Orchestra – Primarily Not Jazz or for Dancing (what a cumbersomely named category!), for “The Colorful Peter Nero.” He would be nominated ten more times.

In all, he released 67 albums. His instrumental version of Michel Legrand’s “Summer of ‘42” became a million best seller. He appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” 11 times, and made numerous appearances on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson. He also worked with Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Andy Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Diane Schuur, Johnny Mathis, Roger Kellaway, Elton John, and his bête noire, Arthur Fiedler.

In the 1970s, Nero’s focus shifted to conducting and composing. He performed up to a hundred concerts a year, often at the piano, playing with one hand, while conducting the orchestra with the other.

He wrote a cantata after Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl.” It’s said to have been the first musical treatment of the material, and the work embraced rock, symphonic, and traditional Jewish music. He conducted the piece in several cities, including with the Greater Trenton Symphony in 1973.

During his decades with the Philly Pops, Nero made his home in Media, PA. The orchestra’s repertoire was a mix of orchestral arrangements of popular jazz, swing, Broadway, and blues, with a smattering of light classical.

His departure from Philly was not an amicable one. Even then, in 2013, the Philly Pops was experiencing choppy waters. The orchestra filed for bankruptcy and asked Nero to take a salary cut. Nero declined.

The orchestra continues to struggle. The 2022-23 season was a particularly dramatic chapter in its turbulent history. But that’s for another post, one I don’t particularly feel like writing!

Intriguingly, following the death of Marvin Hamlisch in 2012, it was revealed that the latter was poised to take over the orchestra’s reins. David Charles Abell was named principal conductor and music director in 2020.

In the 1990s, Nero served concurrently as Pops Music Director of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. He also played with his jazz trio. Post-Philly, Nero returned to concertizing with his longtime bassist, Michael Barnett.

At the time of his death, he was 89-years-old. R.I.P.

Nero plays “Rhapsody in Blue” with Fielder and the Boston Pops

“Fiddler of the Roof” on “The Ed Sullivan Show”

“Tea for Two” (for three)

Million-selling “Summer of ’42”

“Rocky” at Independence Hall

“Rhapsody in Blue” in Philly

July 10, 2023
Billy Mayerl The Marigold Man and Gershwin

Good morning!

Light music master Billy Mayerl is fondly remembered as the “Marigold Man” (after his biggest hit), or perhaps “The English Gershwin.” Mayerl gave the London premiere of “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1925.

Here, Paul Jacobs performs one of his many delightful miniatures, “April’s Fool”:

A short film of Mayerl himself, horsing around, including a brisk rendition of “Marigold”:

PHOTO: Mayerl with his best friend, Bogey

April 6, 2020
My First Bernstein Record

Do you remember your first Bernstein record? Mine was this LP of famous overtures, including “William Tell” and “Poet and Peasant” – great cartoon music! It was sent home with me by my uncle at the end of a Saturday visit, after I picked it out of his collection and listened to it transfixed through his headphones.

My uncle was an audio nut. Until my cousins were born, he was constantly upgrading his system. He always had the latest equipment. You’d think he’d be a natural candidate for a classical music lover – Richard Strauss or Shostakovich would have given his system a hell of a work-out – but he wasn’t. He was into classic rock before it became “classic.” The fact that he even had Bernstein in his collection demonstrates just how remarkable and pervasive Lenny was. He was the people’s conductor.

My uncle loves “Rhapsody in Blue.” He’s got many recordings – even one made on a Moog synthesizer – but Bernstein’s remains his favorite.

The overtures LP was one of my first classical records. Who knew where it would lead?

August 25, 2018

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