PROGRAM NOTES

Robert Russell Bennett | Four Freedoms (1943)

In the spring of 1943, as World War II raged across two oceans, millions of Americans opened their copies of the Saturday Evening Post to find four extraordinary paintings by Norman Rockwell. Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, Rockwell didn’t paint flags or battlefields. He painted ordinary people: neighbors standing up to speak at a town meeting, a family sitting down to a Thanksgiving turkey, parents tucking children into bed. 

Robert Russell Bennett—the genius orchestrator behind Broadway’s greatest hits for Rodgers, Hammerstein, Kern, and Berlin—looked at Rockwell’s canvases and heard music. 

Rather than composing a bombastic military march, Bennett took a cinematic, deeply human approach. In Four Freedoms, he mirrors Rockwell’s gift for finding quiet dignity in everyday life. 

What to Listen For: 

• Movement II (Freedom of Worship): Rockwell struggled with this canvas, eventually rendering a diverse crowd in silent prayer. Bennett matches that vision by weaving four distinct sacred traditions into a single movement: the expressive vocal arc of a Jewish cantor, a solemn Catholic prayer chant, a traditional Protestant hymn, and an African American spiritual. 
• Movement III (Freedom from Want): To capture Rockwell’s famous Thanksgiving scene, Bennett crafts a lively, bustling scherzo—rich with warmth, appetite, and holiday momentum.

George Gershwin arr. Robert Russell Bennett | Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture (1935 / arr. 1942)

When Porgy and Bess hit Broadway in 1935, critics didn’t know which box to check. Opera purists turned up their noses at its pop sensibilities; Broadway goers were caught off guard by its tragic weight and complex operatic recitatives. Gershwin brushed off the gatekeepers, dubbing it an “American folk opera.” He insisted that the stories, street calls, blues, and spirituals of Charleston’s Black community belonged on the grandest stage—and he mandated that every Black role be performed by classically trained African American singers. 

In doing so, Gershwin didn’t just write a masterpiece; he broke Jim Crow barriers in major theaters, forcing venues from Washington, D.C. to South Carolina to integrate their audiences for the first time in history. 

The 24-Minute Challenge: Seven years after Gershwin’s tragic death at age 38, conductor Fritz Reiner asked Robert Russell Bennett to construct an orchestral suite from the opera. Reiner imposed a ruthless constraint: the entire suite had to fit across three double-sided 78-rpm vinyl records—giving Bennett a strict 24-minute ceiling. Bennett resisted the urge to write a cheap “greatest hits” medley, preserving Gershwin’s original colors and theatrical pacing. 

What to Listen For: 

• The Slow Burn: Bennett doesn’t throw you straight into “Summertime.” He makes you wait nearly seven minutes, opening instead with the sweltering, chaotic atmospheric sounds of Catfish Row—complete with vendors shouting and a brewing hurricane—before letting the famous lullaby drift in like a memory. 

Camille Pépin | Feu d’artifice (Fireworks) (2025) 

An orchestra that only plays the past becomes a museum. Enter French composer Camille Pépin, one of the most electric creative voices in modern classical music. 

Pépin doesn’t build pieces around long, romantic melodies. Instead, she treats the orchestra like an optical prism. Her music is about light, motion, and atmosphere—shifting textures that pulse and dance across the stage. Feu d’artifice (French for Fireworks) lives up to its title with explosive momentum, letting individual instruments flare up like brilliant sparks before dissolving back into the darkness. 

What to Listen For:

• The Kinetic Undercurrent: Listen for the steady, driving pulse beneath the surface. Musical phrases flicker rapidly from woodwinds to brass to strings, creating the optical illusion of pyrotechnics bursting overhead. 

Artist Spotlight: Camille Pépin The Jackson Symphony Orchestra is thrilled to program Pépin’s work once again following a memorable performance of her Les eaux célestes in collaboration with the Jackson Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2024. But her rise to prominence wasn’t without friction in a field where women remain drastically underrepresented: 

• Standing Alone: Growing up, Pépin was often the only female composer in her class and lacked visible female composition role models. 
• Challenging Stereotypes: From being assumed male by an administrator on her Conservatoire class list, to having professors tell her to “make coffee” or dismissing her music as merely “fresh and flowery,” she repeatedly faced entrenched biases. 

By writing fiercely adventurous music and collaborating alongside icons like Yo-Yo Ma, Pépin is ensuring the next generation of young women won’t have to look hard to find a role model. 

George Gershwin | Piano Concerto in F Major (1925) 

After Rhapsody in Blue took the world by storm in 1924, detractors claimed Gershwin was a one-hit wonder who relied on arranger Ferde Grofé to do his heavy lifting. Conductor Walter Damrosch tossed down the ultimate gauntlet: write a real, three-movement classical concerto for the New York Symphony Orchestra. 

Gershwin accepted—and decided to do every single page of the orchestration himself. He bought textbooks on instrumentation, retreated to a cottage in upstate New York, and taught himself how to write for a 70-piece orchestra while composing the piece. 

When it premiered at Carnegie Hall, it proved once and for all that Gershwin wasn’t just a songplugger with luck—he was an American master. 

• I. Allegro: A bustling, syncopated portrait of Manhattan, complete with Charleston rhythms and aggressive piano cadenzas. 
• II. Andante con moto: A moody, night-owl blues that feels like stepping out of a cold rain into an underground jazz club. 
• III. Allegro con brio: A virtuosic, heart-pounding sprint to the finish line that merges Lisztian bravura with pure ragtime joy.

What to Listen For: 

• The Night-Club Shift: The opening of the second movement. A solo trumpet with a felt mute plays a lonely, smoky blues song. When the piano enters, it doesn’t sound like a concerto soloist—it sounds like a late-night pianist riffing after hours.