George Gershwin’s parents emigrated from Russia to New York in the 1890s. There was not a piano in the Gershwins’ home until George was twelve years old, but he took to the instrument rapidly, and began studying with Charles Hambitzer with whom he learnt music by Chopin, Liszt and Debussy. At fifteen, Gershwin had had enough of school and dropped out, going to work for a music publisher on Tin Pan Alley. Gershwin played newly published songs for prospective customers and soon began to write his own. He then decided he wanted to move on to work in musical theatre on Broadway, first working as a rehearsal pianist and soon becoming recognised as a composer. By 1919 he had written his first Broadway score and had a contract with a music publisher with many songs in print. He was not yet twentyone years old.

Gershwin wrote his first hit song Swanee in 1919 and, through the recording of it by Al Jolson the following year, made a huge amount of money and spread his name far and wide. The early 1920s saw him composing a review every year, plus three Broadway shows and two for the London stage, the second of which, Lady be Good! had lyrics by his brother Ira Gershwin, who became his main collaborator.

It was in February 1924 that Gershwin took part in An Experiment in Modern Music, a concert produced by band-leader Paul Whiteman who had requested a composition, eventually entitled Rhapsody in Blue, from Gershwin. The composition was another enormous success for Gershwin, being played and recorded countless times ever since. Gershwin wanted to write classical music using the new modern language of jazz, and by fusing the two to make a form of symphonic jazz. He studied harmony and orchestration with Edward Kilenyi and although he continued to write for the Broadway stage, he became more and more interested in classical forms and studied these with Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger and Rubin Goldmark. Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, commissioned by the New York Symphony Orchestra and its conductor Walter Damrosch, was written and premiered in 1925. The 1920s also saw Gershwin composing his Three Preludes for Piano and his symphonic poem, An American in Paris. Whilst in Paris he met Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Alban Berg and William Walton, and at the end of the decade conducted his compositions for the first time in public.

The New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned a work entitled The Dybbuk from Gershwin, but this never materialised. The early 1930s saw Gershwin and his brother in Hollywood composing for films: George was by now the most high-profiled and wealthy American composer. He was an ambitious, vital performer, and film of him performing at the piano shows a vigorous young man enjoying his music and fame. Gershwin’s life was one of composition and performance, culminating in his opera Porgy and Bess performed in 1935; but the world was shocked when, less than two years later, he died from a brain tumour at the age of only thirty-eight.

Rhapsody in Blue was premiered in February 1924 and its success led to a recording being made four months later in June. Made by the acoustic process, the recording was with the same musicians who took part in the concert premiere. The rest of Gershwin’s recordings were made by the electric process, including another recording of Rhapsody in Blue made in 1927. Whilst in London in 1926, Gershwin recorded four of his songs for Columbia with Fred and Adele Astaire as vocal soloists, and later in the year recorded eight solo improvisations on his songs. These discs were sold for the public to dance to, so the performances are rhythmically strict, but they do give an excellent impression of Gershwin’s ebullient, if unsubtle, style which was so often heard at parties in Hollywood and New York. Two years later in July 1928 he recorded two more song improvisations, his Three Preludes for Piano, and a solo version of the Andante from Rhapsody in Blue. Surprisingly, for a composer and performer of his popularity (there are only twelve ten-inch 78rpm sides), Gershwin made only one more commercial recording in which he appears playing the celeste in a 1929 performance of An American in Paris conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret. When Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F was recorded by Whiteman and his orchestra in 1928 the composer did not play the piano part; it was performed by Whiteman pianist Roy Bargy.

Some other interesting and important material has survived in the form of radio broadcasts and private recordings. From an appearance on the Rudy Vallee Show in November 1933 comes a performance of the third movement of the Piano Concerto in F which has been issued by Pearl along with Gershwin’s complete published commercial recordings. Even more fascinating is a compact disc from 1991 on the Limelight label which includes another Rudy Vallee broadcast, extracts from two of Gershwin’s own radio shows and rehearsal performances of what were two new works at the time. There is a rehearsal of the Rhapsody No. 2 from June 1931 with Gershwin playing the piano and directing the orchestra, and a rehearsal performance of parts of Porgy and Bess with the original cast from July 1935. Both of these recordings were made for Gershwin’s own personal use.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).