Having just celebrated the birthday of our nation, it makes me smile to imagine the Founding Fathers enjoyment of it as well. For starters, the "George" of the Philharmonic's concert in the afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, was not King George III but rather George Gershwin.
The orchestra played "Strike Up the Band," variations on "I Got Rhythm," for piano and orchestra and "Rhapsody in Blue," also for piano and orchestra. This was followed by Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring." The finale was left to John Philip Sousa who knew a thing or two about birthday music for a nation!
The composition of the orchestra was changed a little by the requirements of this music. Saxophones were needed for the jazz portion of the concert. With Sousa, it was a matter of bringing on more trumpets, more trombones and the bass tuba.
The first two marches were "Hands Across the Sea" and "The Washington Post." This was stirring music, and all of us wanted an encore. (The program notes revealed that "Hands Across the Sea" had to be repeated on the spot three times when the piece was first premiered in 1899 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.) What would the nation's birthday be without "Stars and Stripes Forever"? Happily, for everybody, we got it, complete with crashing cymbals, chirping piccolos and bombastic brass.
The day ended with an "illumination," the word our Founding Fathers used. The view from atop a building on the Hudson was aesthetically spectacular and entertaining. It was a perfect ending to a perfect "birth" day.
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