A quick reminder that the Hartford Symphony Orchestra opens its new season with concertsThursday October 16 through Sunday October 19 at the Bushnell’s Belding Theater. The finale of the program will be a concert version of highlights from George Gershwin’s "Porgy and Bess." Joining the orchestra will be soloists, the Hartford Chorale, and the Praises of Zion choir from the First Cathedral in Bloomfield.
I have two thoughts about Gershwin and "Porgy."
First, let’s finally grant, without qualifiers, that "Porgy" is an opera, and a great one at that. It is not, as lazy and condescending critics and program note-writers have had it for decades, a "folk-opera."
What is a folk opera, anyway? Yes, I know, Gershwin himself used that term when the work was about to be premiered. But the evidence is that the producers, fearing the word opera would scare off ticket buyers, proposed that term, and the composer, always a bit shy to assign himself a place among legit “classical” composers, acquiesced.
Some of the early critical reaction to "Porgy" stupidly reinforced the idea that this piece was somehow less than a serious work of art. In particular, the often ungenerous – and often just plain wrong – Virgil Thomson opined that "Porgy" was "…falsely conceived and rather clumsily executed… a half-way opera."
The qualifiers just don’t hold up under scrutiny, and I’m afraid it’s not a coincidence that the term folk opera, which is almost never used in connection with any other work, is applied to a piece that just happens to be about poor black people.
Second, I’ve been thinking about Gershwin’s untimely death, in part because I’ve been reading Jan Swafford’s bio of Beethoven, who at least made it to 57, but who clearly was still at the height of his powers. Gershwin died in 1937, at the age of 38, when he was in many ways just entering his musical maturity.
Let’s say Gershwin had been given a more reasonable life-span, and had made it to the age of 80. Think about him living and creating into the 1950s, with the advent of rock 'n roll; into the 1960s, with the rise of the Beatles and Motown; and even into the 1970s, with the appearance of rock opera and epic film scores. George could have penned a bluesy ballad or two for Elvis, or co-produced a concept album with Marvin Gaye, or been invited to play keyboards on The White Album, or collaborated on a rock oratorio with Brian Wilson.
And of course, most tantalizing of all, with his additional four decades of life, Gershwin could have given us six, or eight, or ten more operas: real, legit, unqualified operas. Like "Porgy."
The Future of the Piano, If Any
A couple of years ago, The New York Times ran a piece that described, in brutal detail, how thousands of older pianos in this country are routinely being trucked to dumps and landfills.
For some reason, the piece has been turning up again lately on social media sites. And like the first time around, it is causing a lot of upset.
The Times piece mentioned that often the pianos’ cases and cabinetry – maybe originally a nicely burnished walnut or gleaming ebony – are hacked up into kindling before the actual dumping takes place. They spared us a picture of an axe being taken to some vintage Baldwin or Wurlitzer.
Still, the optics were not good. Just the thought of a proud old upright – possibly once the centerpiece of family sing-alongs or earnest childhood practice sessions – ending its days like a sack of garbage, among actual sacks of garbage, is unsettling.
At the risk of sounding hard-hearted, however, I’m not all that troubled by this story. The unsentimental fact is that nearly all pianos have a fixed lifespan. For the great majority of consumer pianos, according to piano technicians, that lifespan tends to be in the 70- to 90-year range. After that, the piano is pretty much worn out, done. It is, if you will, a late piano.
In theory, you could replace actions and key tops and pin blocks and sounding boards and strings on almost any piano. But unless you’re talking about a Steinway or Bosendorfer, or other really distinguished brand (and even then usually only well-maintained grands), it would be a foolish choice: the resulting refurbished instrument would be worth far less than the thousands, or possibly tens of thousands, you just spent to fix it up.
As sad as it seems, discarding a worn-out piano is about the only way to go.
There is one aspect of this story that I still can’t figure out: if all those old pianos are being thrown away, and yet if millions of Americans nevertheless still play the piano (20 million is the consensus estimate, with about half that number being children and students), that would suggest that lots of new pianos are being sold to replace the worn-out ones.
But this, to put it mildly, is not the case.
In the early decades of the 20th century, Americans bought hundreds of thousands of pianos a year. The high water mark seems to have been 1910, when nearly 400,000 were sold. At the time, there were more than 300 piano manufacturers in the New York City area alone.
By contrast, in 2011, the most recent year for which statistics are available, fewer than 40,000 were sold. By most estimates, at least half of those were purchased by institutions – schools, churches, etc.
So what the heck are those 20 million Americans playing on? And what do they do when their old pianos wear out? I realize some people buy digital pianos these days (though many piano teachers frown on them), but even digital sales are not that robust.
Perhaps a large pent-up demand is building. I don’t think Paul Krugman has addressed this issue publicly yet, but maybe the U.S. economy is on the cusp of a sharp uptick, fueled by a sudden piano-buying frenzy. You heard it here first.
Which Side, Indeed
The incident that took place last Saturday at the St. Louis Symphony concert continues to generate comment, which I take to be a good and healthy thing.
The protesters had purchased tickets to the concert. Their demonstration lasted about four minutes.
For those who might have missed it, after intermission at the orchestra’s home, Powell Hall, just before the orchestra and a chorus were about to begin a performance of the Brahms Requiem, a group of about 50 protesters rose in their seats around the hall and began singing the old civil rights anthem, “Which Side Are You On.” The demonstration was an expression of protest over the killing of black teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson last August.
The protesters had purchased tickets to the concert. Their demonstration lasted about four minutes, after which they all peaceably walked out of the hall.
Amateur video of the incident shows that some members of the audiences were sympathetic to the demonstration, others clearly disdainful of it.
I’ve been surprised that a lot of the subsequent online comment has been along the lines of, “well, they have a right to protest, but that was not the appropriate place and besides it was disrespectful to the musicians.”
I can’t agree. It looked to me as if the whole thing unfolded with dignity and a sense of resolve that recalled the best moments of The Movement.
Classical music fans can’t claim, on the one hand, that this music is relevant and meaningful but then, on the other, declare they are offended when the most explosive issue in their community peaceably manifests itself, for four minutes, inside the concert hall. In a way, the demonstration was an all-too apt preamble to Brahms’ very personal Requiem, the first words of which are, “Blessed are they that mourn…”
And it’s worth noting that, as the demonstration winds down, among the people in the hall seen applauding are many members of the orchestra.
Steve Metcalf was The Hartford Courant’s fulltime classical music critic and reporter for over 20 years, beginning in 1982. He is currently the curator of the Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series at The Hartt School. He can be reached at spmetcalf55@gmail.com.
