Little Threepenny Music
Composed: 1929
- Overture
- Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (The Ballad of Mack the Knife)
- Anstatt Daß-Song (The Instead-Of Song)
- Die Ballade vom angenehmen Leben (Ballad of the Easy Life)
- Pollys Lied (Polly's Song)
- Tango-Ballade (Tango Ballad)
- Kanonen-Song (Cannon Song)
- Dreigroschen-Finale (Threepenny Finale)
Bertolt Brecht, a frequent collaborator and librettist with composer Kurt Weill in the late 1920s, was inspired to create a new opera after attending a wildly popular London revival of John Gay’s 1728 The Beggar’s Opera – a work famous for its use of popular music of the day, and an everyday story of two then-famous criminals (hardly the elevated stuff of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas or Handel’s Julius Caesar from the same era). Indeed, Weill and Brecht held to a belief that “high” and “low” culture were artificial and based on class distinctions. As he wrote in a 1927 essay, Weill wanted composers of opera to address a wider, less “high brow” audience. A music theater work by the Brecht/Weill team resulted, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), celebrating crooks and hoodlums, centering on the characters such as Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife), an unglamorous crook who had dreams of glory; Weill drew on the popular music of the Berlin cabarets of the 1920s (a decidedly American-jazz-inspired music). Music from Die Dreigroschenoper (and the topic of celebrating crooks and gangsters, for that matter) has become part of the fabric of American popular culture; in particular, a sanitized version of the “Ballad of Mack the Knife” captured the imagination of the American record-buying public with popular recordings in the 1950s (and a Grammy Award in 1959; the best-known recording may have been by Bobby Darin, though it has been championed by Weill’s widow Lotte Lenya, as well as being recorded by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and more recently, a version truer to the original by Sting). Weill, who immigrated in the late 1930s and wrote music for a number of successful (and unsuccessful) Broadway musicals, became an American citizen in 1943.
This orchestral suite highlights the important themes and points of the opera (though not in the same order as the original work), including the Cannon Song (a show-stopper in the original production), and Polly’s Song, which is actually more exuberant here than in the original. The arrangement, featuring the winds, brass, and percussion, was commissioned by former Philharmonic Musical Director Otto Klemperer and created by Weill in 1929.
Note by Dave Kopplin
Adagio ma non troppo
Composed: 1964/1971
Charles Mingus’s Adagio ma non troppo was recorded in 1972 for his Columbia Records album Let My Children Hear Music. Mingus hired then New York-based trombonist, arranger, and conductor Alan Raph to orchestrate Adagio as well as some other works for the recording. Adagio first appeared as Mingus’s solo piano composition Myself When I Am Real, which he recorded in 1964.
Patrick Brooks’s transcription follows Raph’s orchestration very closely, differing only in writing out some likely woodwind doublings and reducing the number of basses from six to two. No original score or parts exists. Throughout the transcription process, Raph (who also conducted the recording session in 1972) was consulted and ultimately approved the transcription. The instrumentation for Adagio was dictated by Mingus, and closely resembles a slightly downsized wind ensemble with the addition of cello and bass.
Note by Patrick Brooks
Rhapsody in Blue
Composed: 1924
George Gershwin composed his first Broadway musical score at the age of twenty-one for La La Lucille, which opened on May 26, 1919. In the following years Gershwin, along with his brother Ira, would become one of the most formidable duos in the history of American musical theatre. But it was a happenstance proposal that would propel Gershwin into immediate fame and secure his place in the history of American symphonic music. George and Ira, along with fellow songwriter Buddy De Sylva, were hanging around a pool hall in New York on January 3, 1924 when Ira came across an unexpected announcement in the New York Tribune. Bandleader Paul Whiteman was to present a concert representing the evolution of jazz that he titled “An Experiment in Modern Music.” In the article Whiteman declared that, “George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto, Irving Berlin is writing a syncopated tone poem, and Victor Herbert is working on an American suite.” Ira was not aware that his brother was writing a jazz concerto, and neither was George! After a phone call with Whiteman the following day, the situation was revealed that he was forced into announcing his plans far sooner than anticipated (another bandleader was proposing a similar concept and Whiteman had to get there first) and Gershwin somewhat reluctantly agreed to the commission.
Worried about the short time frame in which he had to complete the work, Gershwin convinced Whiteman to accept a single movement, free-form work – a rhapsody – for piano and orchestra rather than the standard three movement concerto form. He was also concerned about orchestrating the work, afterall, as a Broadway composer he was accustomed to writing a song at the piano and then having an orchestrator produce the full arrangement. Whiteman quickly solved this problem by providing Gershwin with his phenomenal orchestrator Ferde Grofé. After visiting an exhibit with paintings by James Abbot McNeill Whistler, famous for his abstract painting titles, Ira conceived the name Rhapsody in Blue, and within a month the composition was complete. Gershwin performed the piano solo with Paul Whiteman’s band on February 12, 1924 in New York’s Aeolian Hall, dazzling everyone in attendance with his remarkable skill as a pianist and his pure blend of popular and classical music styles. Rhapsody in Blue opens with the most recognizable clarinet solo in all of American music, its smoldering glissando leading into a sophisticated, bluesy melody that sets the tone for the entire Rhapsody. Gershwin’s main themes masterfully alternate with one another, from the boldly driving march-like tune to the sweeping beauty of the strings lyrical melody, but are never far removed from the syncopation and harmonic progressions of Gershwin’s delightful popular music. Following the success of the premiere, Grofé reorchestrated Rhapsody in Blue in 1926 for piano and orchestra, and it is this version that is most frequently performed today.
This edition of Rhapsody in Blue, arranged by Donald Hunsberger, is arranged from both the 1924 and 1926 orchestrations.
Note by Dr. Catherine Keen Hock
Annie Jeng
Hailed for her “brilliant pianism” (Gramophone) and “acrobatic” performances (Take Effect), Taiwanese-American pianist Annie Jeng has performed and taught widely as an educator, soloist, and chamber musician. She approaches musicmaking and teaching as a tool to discover shared humanity and strives to explore ways to dismantle traditional expectations of “good” music through unique programming and interdisciplinary performances. As an advocate for living composers and embracing the creative process, she has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works and is the pianist of several contemporary chamber ensembles including Khemia Ensemble, earspace ensemble, and Sounding Board. Khemia Ensemble (khemiaensemble.org) released their sophomore album, “Intersections,”' with PARMA Recordings featuring new works by David Biedenbender, Nina Shekhar, Phil Sink, Nick Benavides, and Stefan Freund. Other collaborative projects include a 3-D interactive animation titled “Keys” with UNCG Animation Professor, Dan Hale, and “Rachmaninoff” from Master Christopher’s Music Desegregation visual album blending Rachmaninoff’s piano concerti with rap and drum set.
Annie has published her research as a regular writer for the column, “Teaching Tomorrow Today” published in American Music Teachers journal, and as the co-creator of the Frances Clark Center online course “Hidden Gems: Four Centuries of Piano Music by Women Composers.” Her latest commissioning project published by Just a Theory Press, Circles and Lines, consists of new pedagogical works by women composers that introduces contemporary piano techniques to intermediate pianists. Annie has presented at Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) conferences at collegiate, state, and national levels, the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), and College Music Society (CMS) conferences. Annie is also Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit, A Seat at the Piano (ASAP) (aseatatthepiano.com), a resource dedicated to the promotion of inclusion in the performance and study of solo piano repertoire, and 2023 recipient of the MTNA Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award. She is the current President of Greensboro Music Teachers Association (GMTA) and serves on the board for the North Carolina Music Teachers Association (NCMTA) as well as a member of several planning committees for NCKP.
Annie received her DMA in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Michigan, where she also received her MM. She earned her BM in Piano Performance with a minor in Public Health from New York University. Her primary teachers have included Logan Skelton, José Ramón Mendez, Miyoko Lotto, Anne-Marie McDermott, and Faye Bonner. She is currently Assistant Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In her free time, Annie enjoys hiking, kayaking, and discovering the wonders of the outdoors.