Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season January-February 2016 | Page 16

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his death in 2002, The New York Times
called him “a music master as comfortable
with jazz as with the classical idiom.” And
his copyist, Bert Kosow, summed him up
as “the classical guy on the jazz bus.”
Upon graduating from Juilliard in
1937, Shulman became at age 22 a
founding member of the legendary NBC
Symphony under the equally legendary Arturo Toscanini. With a few years
out for service during World War II, he
continued with that ensemble until it
disbanded with Toscanini’s retirement
in 1954, then joined its successor, the
Symphony of the Air. But this was not
enough for Shulman; fascinated with
jazz, he also founded a jazz ensemble, the
New Friends of Rhythm, with his brother Sylvan, also a member of the NBC
Symphony. And he became a composer
whose music was performed by many
orchestras and a prolific arranger, notably
for Steven Allen and Skitch Henderson.
That “classical guy on the jazz bus”
description certainly applies to one of
Shulman’s most popular pieces, A Laurentian Overture, composed in 1951 and
premiered by the New York Philharmonic under Guido Cantelli the following
year. Dedicated to Tallulah Bankhead,
it salutes the Laurentian mountains
north of Montréal, a beloved Canadian
ski resort. And indeed with its bounty
of infectious tunes, it exudes a holiday
atmosphere bright with trumpets and
other brass instruments. Two contrasting
episodes stand out: a rocking, pastoral
interlude featuring the solo oboe and
Shulman’s highly imaginative scoring for
the reprise of his sassy principal theme,
which combines harp and woodwinds
into a marvelously mirthful, fruity accompaniment.
Piano Concerto No. 4 in B-flat
Major for the Left Hand, opus 53

Sergei Prokofiev

Born in Sontsovka, Ukraine, April 23, 1891;
died in Moscow, March 5, 1953

The Fourth Piano Concerto is one of Sergei Prokofiev’s most unjustly underrated
and under-played pieces. Today if we are

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to hear a concerto composed for piano left
hand it must be Ravel’s stunning masterpiece in this genre. But to bypass Prokofiev’s Fourth is to miss one of his most
beautiful slow movements, set within an
ideal blending of keyboard and orchestra.
Sadly, the composer himself never heard
this work performed. Its world premiere
did not come until 1956 in Berlin, three
years after Prokofiev had died and a full
25 years after he composed the concerto
in Paris and southern France in 1931. The
man who commissioned it, Paul Wittgenstein, refused to play it, and Prokofiev,
though originally intending to refashion
it into a work for two hands, apparently
lost faith in the piece and wrote his Fifth
Piano Concerto instead.

It is as though several
strong personalities were
contending for dominance
in this provocative,
always-fascinating music.
Unlike Prokofiev’s other concertos, the
Fourth is not conceived as a showpiece for
the soloist with the orchestra playing a secondary role; instead piano and orchestra
remain in perfect equilibrium throughout.
To balance the tremendously difficult
piano part, Prokofiev chose a smaller orchestra than he typically used, with just a
trumpet, trombone and two horns for his
brass section and a bass drum replacing
the more traditional timpani.
Marked Vivace, the sonata-form opening movement is a whirlwind of speed
and brilliance. Through much of its
four-minute duration, Prokofiev restricts
the pianist to one-note-at-a-time delivery, rapidly coursing over the keyboard’s
range. Only in the intense de