Celebrating a Broadway legend

The Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra brings a tribute to Richard Rodgers, one of the most important American composers of the 20th century.

By ROBERT HICKS
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 9, 2003

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart says it's easy to explain composer the enduring popularity of Richard Rodgers.

"I think there's emotional honesty to his music," he said. "There's a real connectedness to the lyrics. I think that was something really radical for his time, especially in the early Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals: Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Carousel. Much of Broadway writing before that point had been very fluffy, very entertainment-oriented, very formulaic in a lot of ways. Rodgers really tailored the music of every song in a way that really expressed the deepest sentiments of a song in a perfect way."

The Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, under Lockhart's direction, will pay tribute to Rodgers, whose centennial was observed last year, with a program that features Broadway singers Lisa Vroman and Ron Raines at the St. Pete Times Forum on Wednesday.

The program will include People Will Say We're in Love from Oklahoma!, Soliloquy from Carousel, and songs from South Pacific, The Sound of Music and The King and I. There will also be witty Rodgers and Hart songs from the '20s and '30s, such as To Keep My Love Alive.

"Basically, the problem when you put together a Richard Rodgers program is an embarrassment of riches," Lockhart said. "The man wrote for over 50 years on Broadway. He wrote a couple of thousand songs, over a thousand just with Lorenz Hart, his first writing partner of significance. "When you look through these, you start to say, 'That needs to be on the program and that needs to be on the program.' You'd end up with a seven-hour-long program. So you have to make some unpleasant choices between things," he said.

"What we try to give in a two-hour concert is a real balanced look at really one of the most important popular American composers of any generation, a real American classic, and a man as responsible as anyone for defining what we think of as the Broadway musical today."

Rodgers (1902-1979) is best known for his collaborations with lyricists Hart and Oscar Hammerstein. He paved the way for today's Broadway musical by integrating songs into the musical's plot and by writing music that reflected the characters' emotions.

With Hart, he worked in Hollywood from 1931 to 1935 writing songs for film classics such as Love Me Tonight (starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald), Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (starring Al Jolson), and Mississippi (starring Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields).

His work with Hammerstein began in 1942. Their first work, Oklahoma!, won the Pulitzer Prize. Another collaboration, Carousel, won best musical from the Drama Critics Circle. Following closely afterward was South Pacific, which won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Drama Critics Circle award for best musical. And The King and I (starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner) won a Tony Award for best musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein, however, will always be best remembered for their Tony-winning and Grammy award-winning musical, The Sound of Music.

Lockhart, 43, who is in his eighth season as Boston Pops conductor, must confront the challenge of adapting Rodgers' vocal music for orchestra.

"A lot of times, the music and the words are integrated so very, very well, it's hard to do purely instrumental versions of some of these songs without losing a lot of impact of the song. So we try to pick very carefully," he said.

"When we use voices, it's to deliver a message that people may not automatically know the words the second they hear three notes. When we don't use voices, it's often either music written originally for instrumental performance, like the waltz from Carousel and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue from the 1936 Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes. That sort of thing. Or it's music that's so well-known to the audience that the lyrics go on in their head whether we sing them or not."

PREVIEW: Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra's Richard Rodgers Celebration Tour, conducted by Keith Lockhart, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa. $12.50-$95. (813) 301-6600.

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