Gershwin, Bernstein and Martin

Who can mistake the thrilling, sliding, bluesy clarinet opening of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? Tonight, you can hear that fabulous piece alongside three other cutting-edge works.

Looking for a follow-up to the huge success of Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin was inspired by the sound of Parisian traffic, Gershwin took his friend to car shops to buy actual car horns which he took home and used in his “rhapsodic ballet” An American in Paris. Premiered in New York in 1928 it was later featured in a ballet in Gene Kelly’s Academy Award-winning film of the same name.

Bernstein’s On The Town also started life as a ballet which was met with such acclaim that it spawned a whole musical. This is another love letter to a city – New York. Filled with the pulsating energy of the Big Apple, lust and love, Bernstein’s lush music is infectious.

The Lim Fantasy of Companionship for Piano and Orchestra opens with the same sense of mystical Broadway glamour and is an engaging and heartfelt work with a virtuosic solo part for pianist Mark Bebbington. Exploring the intersection between technology and music, Manu Martin is innovating just as Gershwin and Bernstein did before him when they blurred the lines between jazz, Broadway, and the symphony orchestra.

‘The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra truly played to an extremely high standard under Ziegler’s baton’ (Bachtrack)