The three pieces on today’s program are all atypical for their composers. George Gershwin, the most famous of all American composers, wrote primarily for the musical theater, as well as several classical pieces for orchestra. However, Gershwin published no chamber music, and the Three Preludes are the only pieces of classical music he wrote for the solo piano, his primary instrument. American composer Gian Carlo Menotti is remembered primarily for his numerous operas, many of which (such as Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Medium, The Consul, and the Saint of Bleeker Street) were extremely popular in his lifetime. While Menotti also wrote several pieces for orchestra, he wrote very few pieces of chamber music and described the “Suite” as “my first serious piece of chamber music.” And almost all of Chopin’s music was composed for solo piano. The Cello Sonata is one of only three chamber music pieces he published.
Gershwin:
Gershwin originally told reporters that he wanted to compose 24 preludes for piano, following the models established by Bach, Chopin and Debussy. He did not follow through on this intention, performing only five preludes at the 1926 concert where the “Prelude in C#” was premiered. Eventually, only three preludes for piano were finally published by Gershwin in 1927, including the “Prelude in C#” that we hear today.
It was (and remains to this day) common practice for other musicians to arrange and orchestrate the music written by the composers for the scores for Broadway shows and Hollywood films. Gershwin was no exception to this practice. However, Gershwin could be very touchy about arrangements of his music, particularly his famous Rhapsody in Blue. The version of Rhapsody in Blue that most people are familiar with was arranged for orchestra by Ferde Grofe, also known as the composer of the Grand Canyon Suite for orchestra. Grofe also made the original arrangement of the piece for piano and jazz band in 1924, pieced together from Gershwin’s sketches in three hurried weeks before its premiere. Nevertheless, Gershwin felt compelled to pronounce on several occasions that HE was the composer of the Rhapsody, not Grofe, despite Grofe’s significant contribution to putting the piece together at its inception.
Gershwin was enormously successful as a composer in his lifetime, making a large fortune composing music for numerous Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals. Many of his songs became standards in his lifetime. Yet, even after the enormous success of Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, Gershwin remained uncertain of his talents as a classical composer and over the course of his life approached numerous famous classical composers for composition lessons. These composers included Edgard Varese, Maurice Ravel, Nadia Boulanger, Jacques Ibert, Igor Stravisnsky, Alexander Glauzounov, Ernest Toch, and Arnold Schoenberg. When he asked Stravinsky for lessons, Stravinsky reportedly asked Gershwin how much money he had made in the previous year from his music. When Gershwin answered that he’d earned $250,000, Stravinsky stated, “I should be taking lessons from you.” When in Paris, Gershwin also asked Ravel to give him lessons. Ravel was said to have responded, “Why do you want to be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?”
Menotti:
Unlike George Gershwin, whose music remains extremely popular almost 90 years after his death, Gian Carlo Menotti is a composer who found great success early in his career, but whose music has largely been forgotten in the years since his death in 2007. Menotti was an unabashed Romantic who wrote tonal music at a time (after World War II) when such things were not fashionable. He found popular success early with his operas. Indeed, his opera The Medium had a successful run on Broadway in 1947. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for music with his operas The Consul (1950) and The Saint of Bleeker Street (1955). His Christmas opera for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors (first broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1951) was an annual Christmas tradition on American television for many years and remains Menotti’s most popular work. Nevertheless, while Menotti continued to compose operas, ballets, and other orchestral scores until his death, his later works were not as successful with critics or the public. Menotti’s music is now rarely performed. For example, the Metropolitan Opera has not staged a Menotti opera in 60 years.
Menotti was also known as the long-term romantic and professional partner of the American composer Samuel Barber. The two met in 1928 while students at the Curtis Institute of Music and stayed together more than 40 years. In 1943, the two men purchased a home together in Mount. Kisco, New York they called Capricorn, which Barber commemorated in music in 1944 with his Capricorn Concerto for flute, oboe, trumpet and strings. Menotti wrote the libretto for Barber’s opera Vanessa, which was premiered by the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 and for which Barber won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1958. Menotti and Barber ended their romantic relationship in 1970 and sold Capricorn in 1972. While some have suggested that Barber’s depression and alcoholism, which effected his productivity as a composer later in his life, was exacerbated by his breakup with Menotti, Menotti was at Barber’s side when Barber died in 1981.
Chopin:
Chopin is universally famous as the composer of piano music. In addition to the Preludes, Etudes, Mazurkas, Polonaises, Nocturnes, Waltzes, and numerous other short piano pieces, Chopin also composed three piano sonatas, as well as two concertos and a smattering of other works for piano and orchestra. However, he composed few works of chamber music. Discounting a work for flute and piano he wrote as a teenager, Chopin wrote only three chamber pieces. Two, the Polonaise brilliante, Op. 3, for cello and piano, and the Piano Trio, Op. 8, are early works written in Poland before Chopin’s exile to Paris in 1831. By contrast, the Cello Sonata, Op. 65, is a very late work, one of the last pieces Chopin composed and written at a time when Chopin had largely fallen silent as a composer.
Chopin’s final concert performance in February 1848 was not Chopin’s last performance as a pianist. On a tour of England later in 1848, which was undertaken by Chopin to escape Paris during the revolution of 1848, Chopin, despite his ill health, performed several times for wealthy patrons in their homes. This reminds us that Chopin was much more comfortable playing his music privately in the homes and salons of friends and patrons rather than on the concert stage. Indeed, Chopin only appeared in public 30 times in the 30 years he was active as a composer and pianist. He was not a flamboyant public virtuoso like Franz Liszt. He intended his music to be heard in more intimate settings.
Chopin wrote the Cello Sonata for (and dedicated it to) Auguste Franchomme, a French cellist who met Chopin early after he arrived in Paris and became one of his closest friends. Chopin biographer Alan Walker describes Franchomme as “one of the few individuals in whose company Chopin felt completely at ease.” Franchomme would be one of the pallbearers at Chopin’s funeral in 1848. Franchomme was an esteemed cellist and composer, whose friends included Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt, as well as Chopin. He played the Cello Sonata at its premiere on a Stradivarius cello he had purchased for 25,000 francs (an astounding sum at the time) a few years earlier. This cello, known as the “Dupont” Stradivarius of 1711, was later acquired by Mstislav Rostropovich, who made several recordings with it. It’s fascinating to think that when you hear certain performances by Rostropovich, you are hearing the same cello that Chopin heard when he performed his Cello Sonata in 1847.
Than you for attending my concert! Without you, it would have just been a rehearsal
Program notes by Douglas Lee, c 2025