Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture

Arranged by Gershwin's good friend and sometimes assistant Robert Russell Bennett in 1942, Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture includes most of the best-known songs from the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess, although not exactly in the order of their appearance. Though the Symphonic Picture is sometimes dismissed as a sequence of the opera's "greatest hits," the first well-known melody, "Summertime," is not heard until nearly seven minutes into the work. While some of the more esoteric parts of the opera are absent, much of the catchier tunes can be heard only in this suite and not in others, as Gershwin neglected to include them in his Catfish Row Suite, which tended to highlight the more cerebral elements of the work.

The medley was prepared at the behest of Fritz Reiner, then conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, who led the premiere. Bennett credits Reiner with having chosen the excerpts, and their sequence. Reiner aimed for a precisely-24-minute length; it was designed to fit three 78-rpm records (4 minutes per side). Besides Reiner's request that the piano (which Gershwin used for texture, not for soloing) be eliminated, the actual orchestration in most passages is very closely based on Gershwin's original scoring.