… 1941, Jerome Kern’s “Scenario for Orchestra” premiered at Cleveland’s Severance Hall.
Dr. Artur Rodzinski, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, commissioned Kern to provide the twenty-minute symphonic suite, which Robert Russell Bennett (again) orchestrated.
The “Scenario for Orchestra for Orchestra” closed the program on October 23. First up was Beethoven’s First Symphony, then Hindemith’s “Mathis der Mahler.” After intermission, the orchestra played Mendelssohn’s incidental music from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, followed by Kern.
First night critic Herbert Elwell damned the piece with faint praise, calling it “pleasant entertainment.” Perhaps, but even he could not deny that the first-nighters loved it.
Columnist William F. McDermott was more enthusiastic, and noted how the ghost of Helen Morgan, dead but two weeks before, seemed to hover over the proceedings.
On Sunday, November 2, Rodzinski and the Cleveland Orchestra conducted the Scenario again, at Public Hall, on a program called “Carnival of the Birds and Beasts.” Aside from Kern, the keystone of the program was the popular Peter and the Wolf, alongside The Flight of the Bumblebee, The Merry Chicken Yard and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer’s Night Dream.
Rodzinski took to the podium the following Sunday, in Ann Arbor.
Rodzinski conducted performances in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Bay City, and Battle Creek, before he led the New York Philharmonic in a reading of the score on November 19th – at Carnegie Hall.
The concert was broadcast over CBS radio the following Sunday.
Have a listed to Kern and Bennett’s soul-stirring brilliance all on its own, without the notable contributions of Oscar Hammerstein II, Ziegfeld, Helen Morgan … and a host of others.
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