Cuban Overture

Prewar, pre-Castro Cuba, though politically corrupt and riven by social injustice, was much liked by Americans, not least those who spent their holidays in the smart tourist hotels of Havana. George Gershwin, who visited Havana with friends in 1932 not long after the first performance of his Second Rhapsody, was no exception in this respect. What really impressed him, however, was not so much the cheap cigars as the dance music. That much is clear from the brilliantly colourful orchestral piece, originally called Rumba, which he wrote immediately on his return to New York. It wasn’t just the rhythms that interested him: he was fascinated too by the exotic percussion instruments that gave the local bands their distinctive sound – claves, maracas, guiro, bongos – examples of which he took back home with him in the intention of incorporating them in his new score.

Percussion instruments do, in fact, play a vital role in what Gershwin later decided to call the Cuban Overture. Once the dance tunes kick in after the hyper-active introduction, they have an invigoratingly idiomatic effect – the bongos being prominently associated with the main rumba theme introduced by strings but later taken over by resplendent brass. In the slower middle section, the beginning of which is signalled by a thoughtful clarinet solo over rumbling timpani, percussion instruments are used to a more poetic purpose, adding atmospheric colouring to an expressive episode which curiously combines blues with hints of flamenco. The climax of that slower middle section gives way to bongos and claves impatient to recall the earlier dance material, which duly reappears but comparatively briefly before being swept into the irresistibly uninhibited coda.