Roll recordings and the brief few seconds of Gershwin playing ‘I Got Rhythm’ (1931 film) on YouTube attest to his prowess on the piano. He produced a long string of Broadway shows with titles like “Oh, Kay!” and “Girl Crazy” – even just the overtures to these are fantastic to listen to by themselves. Famous songs include “Let’s call the whole thing off” (“I say neether, you say neither…”) and “Nice work if you can get it”. Gershwin was not only an active Broadway composer of the ‘20s and ‘30s but a serious classical composer too. Irving Berlin said of him that “the rest of us were songwriters, George was a composer”. Here are his main works (with, as usual, my favourites in bold):
- Rhapsody in Blue. This is the piece that shot him to stardom. It’s a short one-movement piece for piano and orchestra, commencing with that famous clarinet glissando.
- Porgy and Bess. This is a genuine opera, with delicious music and includes such tracks as “Summertime and the living is easy”, “I got plenty of nottin’” and “It ain’t necessarily so”. It was a mix of Broadway, serious opera and gospel, and it courted racial controversy too – the idea that a white man could write music of the Blacks in South Carolina. Duke Ellington famously said that no negro could possibly be taken in by this work!
- Piano Concerto in F – a jazzy Rachmaninov-style piano concerto with the virtuosity toned down a bit, and soaring melodies
- “An American in Paris”, a fun orchestral piece which sounds as if it were written to be choreographed. It also inspired the musical film of the same name with Gene Kelly (with the “I got rhythm” scene)
Gershwin tragically died at the untimely age of 38.