Composer of the Week: Gershwin

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Migrated podcast image for: Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: George Gershwin (1898-1937): The First Great American Opera

The First Great American Opera

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, George Gershwin (1898-1937), The First Great American Opera

Donald Macleod focuses on the origins and evolution of Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.

Donald Macleod explores the origins and evolution of George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.

Donald Macleod explores the origins and difficult evolution of George Gershwin’s long-awaited opera Porgy and Bess.

In 1926 friends gave George Gershwin a copy of a novel called Porgy by DuBose Heyward. It was set among the labourers and stevedores of Charleston, South Carolina. Gershwin sat up all night reading Porgy and in the morning wrote to Heyward to suggest they develop it into an opera together.

It would be almost ten years before that work came to the stage. But when it did, in the shape of Porgy and Bess – the story of the inhabitants of Catfish Row and the love affair between the beggar, Porgy, and a young prostitute, Bess – it became Gershwin’s final great work, lauded by many as the First Great American Opera.


They Can’t Take that Away From Me
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Jasbo Brown Blues
Richard Rodney Bennett, piano

Summertime
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Simon Rattle, conductor
Glyndebourne Chorus
Harolyn Blackwell, soprano

It Ain't Necessarily So (arr. Heifetz)
Randall Goosby, violin
Zhu Wang, piano

Bess, You is my Woman Now
Charles Lloyd, alto sax
Jason Moran, piano

Catfish Row Suite
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig 
Riccardo Chailly, conductor
Stefano Bollani, piano

Rhapsody in Blue
George Gershwin, piano roll recording

Composer of the Week: George Gershwin (1898-1937)

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the life and career of George Gershwin in 1920s and 30s America.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Composer of the Week

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

The First Great American Opera

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3