'THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK' IN BANGKOK
From Ragtime to Over The Rainbow, the RBSO will celebrate the stars of 20th-century US musicals
Never, ever call American popular melodies mere light music. The serious Maurice Ravel insisted on meeting George Gershwin in America before any other composer, while stern old Arnold Schoenberg was Gershwin’s tennis partner in Beverly Hills. The Lion of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, invited Irving Berlin on a yacht cruise. (This was actually an error : Churchill thought he was inviting political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, though the British aristocrat and the honky-tonk piano player did get along well.) Kurt Weill, with his partner Bertolt Brecht, almost brought down Hitler in pre-War Germany before he fled to America, triumphing on Broadway. Cole Porter was described by Larry Adler — another Schoenberg tennis partner — as “the aristocrat of composers in everything he wrote, everything he did. Everything had class”. These men and many others whose American tunes rival Schubert and Chopin, and whose words make up the most exciting poetry of the 20th century, will be sung, played, hummed and certainly remembered on Jan 31, when the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra presents “The Great American Songbook”. The Great American Songbook attempts to give a spacious tapestry of American music with more than two-dozen songs and orchestral pieces, making up a century between Irving Berlin and Stephen Sondheim.
The songs came from two overlapping circles. First was jazz, which started out purely African- American and then evolved ( not always fortunately) into white adaptations of jazz, like Irving Berlin, whose first hit was Alexander’s Ragtime Band, written in 1911. The title referred to an African-American jazz band, yet the Jewish/ African-American bond was an enduring one.
The second stem was American musical theatre. Gershwin was a pop and would-be jazz performer and writer, as well as an opera composer, with Porgy And Bess. And the American musical itself attracted the best composers of the century — Rodgers and Hammerstein, of course, but earlier Richard Rodgers and his first librettist, Lorenz Hart. Hammerstein was the child of Broadway theatre entrepreneurs, a brilliant storyteller, a clever but not too clever manipulator of words — and the teacher of Stephen Sondheim, who still reveres him. But Richard Rodgers’s previous collaborator, Lorenz Hart, had been a total misfit. An alcoholic, a homosexual (in an age when that was demonised), his music was sharp, acerbic, cynical, wicked and diamond- sharp brilliant. That can be heard here in The Lady Is A Tramp ( Oscar Hammerstein would never write a song like that), and My Funny Valentine.
Kurt Weill made his name in pre- war Germany with The Threepenny Opera, but he made his fortune in America, writing a dozen musicals, putting his classical training and genius in Mack The Knife and perhaps the greatest American tune ever written, September Song. He was German-Jewish, the rest were American- Jewish, though two of them — Irving Berlin and Jules Styne — were sons of Russian- Jewish cantors, the singers of the Jewish synagogue. Yet who could define America like Berlin, who wrote not only White Christmas and Easter Parade but even God Bless America? And who could define the street- level Broadway standards like Luck Be A Lady, the ultimate gambling song, from Guys And Dolls.
Jerome Kern was born to middle- class New York parents, and he is a very “American” composer. But when this writer listens to Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, a strange thing happens. The melody sounds like a Hebrew chant in a Jewish synagogue. Just try it.
American Songbook has even more composers from the Golden Century of tunes. You may not have heard of Harold Arlen, but he composed one of the most famous songs ever written. Arlen was composing music for a Judy Garland movie called The Wizard Of Oz, and was stuck for a theme song. The only way to find it, he thought, was to let inspiration strike.
Where other composers wrote for the words (or the words were written for the music), Arlen, ever the Orthodox Jew, was convinced that God spoke to him with music. So, instead of labouring over the song, he went out driving with his wife. He stopped the car, looked up, took out his “jot notebook” and out came Over The Rainbow.
He raced back to the studio, played it for his collaborator and was given a no. “It’s too operatic. Judy can’t sing it. She’s a pop singer.” Arlen then went to George Gershwin’s brother (the songwriting community was almost incestuous), played it and Ira Gershwin said: “You got too many chords, it’s too flowery. Play it simply.” Arlen went back, played it for Judy Garland, she sang it (that whole tricky operatic octave at the start), and the rest is music history. As is Gershwin’s Fascinatin’ Rhythm and Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns and more, far more.
These composers were part of the gang of New York/Jewish/ immigrant geniuses. Cole Porter was the outlier. A product of upperclass St Louis (like T.S. Eliot) and Yale (Eliot went to Harvard), he left America for Europe (like Eliot). But instead of becoming a poet on the page, Porter turned to music, to the theatre, both in words and music.
In fact, his facility with both mediums often have him confused with Noel Coward, since both of them had ( in Coward’s words) “a talent to amuse”. And while there have been better musicals than Kiss Me, Kate, nobody ever brought together Shakespeare, comedy touring, great songs and incredible lyrics like Porter. His I’ve Got You Under My Skin and Cheek To Cheek all merge the greatest sophistication under a veneer of simplicity. Why did Porter leave his native land? He was too international in his attitudes, his own homosexuality was never a problem in Paris (or with his wife), and he simply felt more the cosmopolitan than the Broadway denizen. Yet listen to this anecdote. After Porter had written some mediocre Broadway shows, he was having lunch in Venice with Noel Coward, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. They loved Porter’s music, but couldn’t figure out why he never had been a star.
“I believe,” Porter said over his third bottle of wine, “that I have figured out my problem and my solution.”
Continued this extreme Midwestern WASP: “I’ll write Jewish tunes.” And yes, when listening to Night And Day, you might discover that minor Semitic/Mediterranean key and feeling which could classify most of the composers being playing tonight. Who are the performers for this bonanza of tunes? The two soloists, Emma Williams and Ashley Day, have vast experience, in pop and in musicals generally.
Emma Williams’ career started with television appearances throughout London. After study at the Yorkshire Academy of Performing Arts, she became a constant player on the West End stage, including the role of Truly Scrumptious opposite Michael Ball in the original cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, winning the Arts Correspondents’ Award for best newcomer.
Other West End credits include Jenny in Love Story, and the title character in Desperately Seeking Susan. Concert performances include Sweeney Todd with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Ms Williams has four Olivier Award nominations.
Her partner here is Ashley Day, whose theatre performances include most of the composers to be represented in Bangkok. He’s been a part of national tours of Oklahoma!, Leonard Bernstein’s On The Town and The Nutcracker (in which he danced) at Sadler’s Well. Recordings include the original cast albums of Wizard Of Oz, Evita and Mary Poppins.
Martin Yates, who will conduct the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, is well known as a composer, orchestrator and conductor of both classical and pop. Making his conducting debut with the Israel National Opera, his fame spread back to his homeland. At the Edinburgh Festival, he conducted Bernstein’s On The Town, and then conducted a litany of musicals on the West End, including Phantom Of The Opera, Carousel, Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard.
His heart was divided, though, and his return to classical conducting gave him the podium for orchestras throughout Europe, as well as conducting for the Nobel Prizes in Oslo.
One doesn’t know how these diverse conducting skills will affect The Great American Songbook, but perhaps composer Kurt Weill had the right attitude for this concert. “I have never differentiated between ‘light’ and ‘serious’ music,” he once said. “There is only good music and bad music.”
The two soloists, Emma Williams and Ashley Day, have vast experience, in pop and in musicals generally