On The Mark: Gershwin comes alive with close listening

Music and film have long offered “outsiders” — immigrants, women, African Americans — opportunities to tell their stories, use their talents and earn a living. Often pigeonholed into stereotypical roles and marginal venues, many have been able to create breathtaking works that endure and enrich American life. They also provide windows into other cultures and belief systems, often emotionally, by telling stories. Sometimes their works cross racial and ethnic lines, tackling topics where most fear to tread.

Being anchored at home, I’ve been listening to CDs I’ve enjoyed for many years. Performances of George Gershwin’s music are among my favorites. As a teenager, I began trying to play his compositions. I still play from my raggedy “Music by Gershwin,” published in 1975 with a five-page foreword about his life. My favorites: “The Man I Love” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” perhaps because both compositions are slow and relatively easy to play as well as gorgeous. “Rhapsody in Blue” is thrilling but way too difficult.

With Covid isolation time on my hands, I found films on YouTube, thanks to The History Channel and A&E Networks. One begins with the story of his parents, Russian Jews from St. Petersburg, fleeing the pogroms. They settled in New York City where their son, Ira, was born in 1896 and George in 1898. They managed to buy a used piano for the two boys, who both radiated interest and ability.

I never imagined I’d be able to see George Gershwin play the piano. Not long into this 90-minute documentary, we are treated to the youthful George playing his “Rhapsody in Blue” in concert. His hands are careering over the keyboard, creating magnificent sounds that make you imagine you could literally fly. It’s now very clear to me why I could never play it.

Though Ira also played piano, his younger brother was the melodic prodigy. Ira became a brilliant lyricist. They teamed up and produced many pathbreaking compositions.

For most of us, the most powerful of his works — both musically and from a sociological point of view — is his opera, “Porgy and Bess.” Hardly a soul in our country isn’t familiar with Gershwin’s Porgy composition, “Summertime.” “Porgy and Bess” is based on Dorothy and DuBose Heyward’s play, “Porgy,” adapted from DuBose’s 1925 novel of the same name, about African American residents in Charleston, South Carolina.

George wrote the music, and Ira and DuBose collaborated on lyrics and the libretto. Still in his 20s, George approached the Metropolitan Opera, proposing a production of “Porgy and Bess.” The Met was resistant, especially because Gershwin insisted on an all-African American cast. He prevailed, arguing forcefully that one couldn’t have white singers delivering the arias he’d composed. You can see clips from this first production on YouTube, along with more than 70 productions on Google, some full-length filmed recordings from all over the world.

I recently read through scholarly reviews and critiques of “Porgy and Bess.” Music historian Lawrence Starr unpacks the long history of the opera, its periodic productions, and what the critics thought of it, often disagreeing with each other. He covers controversies about casting, staging, and the treatment of race in its libretto. He cites critiques by African American authors such as James Baldwin.

Starr concludes that Gershwin was a successful interloper between classical and popular musical genres. And, although the “Porgy and Bess” portrayals of Black life continue to stir controversy, Starr believes the opera deserves the many remarkable, and much improved, productions that it has enjoyed in recent decades.

George lived a prodigious, acclaimed, and short life. He died at age 38 of a brain tumor. Although the illness was short, he knew he was dying. One of his last compositions was the beautiful “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” In my favorite rendition, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong sing this together. Thanks to YouTube, you can treat yourself to many other versions as well.

I listen often to the marvelous CD “By George And Ira: Red Hot On Gershwin,” a Polygram compilation published in 1998. On it, you are treated to performances of the brothers’ music by jazz greats such as Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Lester Young, Kenny Burrell, Stan Getz, and Charlie Parker. It includes a screaming “Summertime” by Janis Joplin that is almost unbearable. And a gorgeous “The Man I Love,” with Lester Young on the sax, Nat King Cole on the piano, and Buddy Rich on the drums. Thank you, George and Ira.

Read more in Soraya Nadia McDonald’s “A New ‘Porgy and Bess,’” which raises old questions about race and opera.

There is also Michael Cooper’s “The Complex History and Uneasy Present of ‘Porgy and Bess.’”

Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot board member, she lives in Red Clover Township north of Cromwell with her husband, Rod Walli.