1. Allegro
Duration of movement: 12:16
0:00
Thundering timpani, swinging horn accents, and a snare drum that sparkles like champagne, George Gershwin’s 1925 Piano Concerto in F is firmly rooted in the Roaring Twenties.
0:48 timpani back
Gershwin, only 26, had already made his mark when he began this work. After receiving the commission from conductor Walter Damrosch, he postponed it to complete two Broadway musicals.
1:51 low octave piano (loud)
Amid his busy schedule, Gershwin sought inspiration in New York’s jazz salons and ballrooms. He wanted to keep pace with the latest sounds of the genre.
2:39 orchestra exit
The sweeping piano melody is jazzy, but also deeply romantic. Its sultry grandeur fits both a European concert hall and a Manhattan café.
3:36 violins melody, piano
This concerto was written a year after Gershwin's celebrated jazz fantasy ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ The concerto is more elaborate, it is a solid classical piano concerto full of refined, interrelated melodies.
4:35 clarinets, bassoons
The clarinets and bassoons play a Charleston rhythm. This dance, with its swinging, pulsating rhythm, had become a nationwide sensation in African-American ballrooms.
5:19 piano chromatic thirds
Conductor Walter Damrosch described Gershwin’s embrace of the jazz idiom: ‘Many people avoid jazz like a cat around hot porridge. Gershwin, by contrast, takes jazz by the hand as a prince might lead Cinderella.’
6:20 piano high major
In these tender, tickling piano notes, we hear the influence of French composers such as Debussy and Ravel, whom Gershwin greatly admired. A year later, he would spend several months in Paris.
7:17 piano back
Gershwin was only 16 when, in 1915, he began working as a ‘song plugger’ on Broadway. A gifted pianist, he played songs of his own and others for producers.
8:04 piccolo accent
Gershwin once remarked: ‘True music reflects the thought and aspiration of its people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today.’
8:55 violas, cello melody
Some jazz musicians have considered Gershwin’s music too stylized. After all, ‘true jazz’ thrives on improvisation. Yet Gershwin captures the vitality and spontaneity of the genre.
9:49 tutti
The full orchestra, led by the violins, swells with the languid melody first introduced in the piano. The piano provides a driving, resonant accompaniment.
10:38 strings away
Beyond its lyrical role, the piano often functions as a percussion instrument in Gershwin’s work. This percussive approach was characteristic of the 1920s, heard in both jazz and in the music of composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev.
11:26 piano alone
In a final flourish, the movement’s opening theme—built on a characteristic blues bass figure—returns in both piano and orchestra. Together, they propel the first movement to a sparkling conclusion.
2. Adagio
Duration of movement: 10:16
0:00
Every composer is shaped by their surroundings. For Gershwin, it was the city streets. Muted horns and trumpets drift from the late-night speakeasies (secret bars) of New York.
0:45 High trumpet
After Gershwin’s untimely death at 38, composer Arnold Schoenberg observed that ‘his music gives the impression of improvisation, with all its merits and demerits.’
1:47 Entry violins, violas
Writer Orrin Howard detects echoes of the French Impressionists, such as Debussy and Ravel, in the hazy soundscape of the clarinets and the trumpet.
2:50 Entry piano
The soloist embellishes the bluesy melody with playful, winking notes. The violins accompany him with banjo-like plucking in the background.
4:01 Oboe
During a visit to Paris, the eager Gershwin asked Maurice Ravel for lessons. Ravel refused: ‘Why become a third-rate Ravel when you’re already a first-rate Gershwin?’
4:47 solo violin
Some colleagues did not consider Gershwin a ‘serious’ composer. With his popular hits, he was dismissed as a mere ‘tunesmith’, an expert in crafting hummable melodies.
5:59 piano entry
The piano interrupts the trumpet and drifts into caressing blues melodies. Then we hear a quasi-improvised wave-like movement across the entire keyboard.
6:59 orchestra return
Writer Orrin Howard described the warm string melody we hear now as the ‘grand melody of this movement, a true Gershwin song that is, well, irresistibly Gershwinian.’
7:44 solo strings
As if on a night out, we drift from the concert hall to an intimate after-hours salon, where a string quartet and flute gently frame the piano.
8:45 tutti
Gershwin was once labeled as merely a songwriter. Now he is regarded as one of the most influential American composers, for both his musical theater and his classical works.
9:34 Piano and Flute
With its sighing, airy sound, the flute imitates the jazzy opening melody of the trumpet. This tranquil second section fades into tender memories of the beginning of a long evening.
3. Allegro agitato
Movement duration: 7:29
0:00
This third and final movement bursts forth like a clattering steam locomotive. It gained widespread popularity through the film comedy ‘An American in Paris,’ in which pianist Oscar Levant performs it in a fever dream.
1:00 Piano glissando
Gershwin’s influence reached across the Atlantic, resonating even in Europe. When Ravel visited New York in 1928, the two composers often frequented jazz clubs together.
1:48 Trumpet and Violins
Although the harmonies and melodies in his concerto draw on jazz, Gershwin structures this movement in the classical rondo form, in which contrasting episodes alternate with a recurring refrain.
2:33 Xylophone
For Gershwin, the music of the African American community was the driving force behind a ‘truly American’ music.
3:28 Horns, Violins
In the piano part, at times hammering, at times shimmering, Gershwin quotes another classical genre: the toccata. The toccata emphasizes dexterity and playful virtuosity.
4:18 Orchestra Disappears
The piano gently repeats the movement’s melodies. The orchestra, however, responds by seizing the piano’s sharp, repetitive notes.
4:58 Gong
Suddenly, the languid melody from the first movement resounds across the full orchestra, even more sensuous than before. Here, Gershwin weaves together all the motifs of the entire concerto.
5:45 Accent, Piano Solo
The music races toward a shattering climax. After the four timpani strokes that opened the concerto, piano and orchestra surge forward in a final burst of frothy, exuberant sound.