The Premiere of the Day: George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue

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Rhapsody in Blue
by George Gershwin
Cover of the original sheet music of Rhapsody in Blue
Genre	Orchestral jazz
Form	Rhapsody
Composed	January 1924
Published	June 12, 1924 Harms, Inc.[1]
Premiere
Date	February 12, 1924
Location	Aeolian Hall, New York City, US
Conductor	Paul Whiteman
Performers	George Gershwin (piano) Ross Gorman (clarinet) Ferde Grofé (orchestrator)
Recordings
18:10 The United States Marine Band's 2018 performance of the 1924 jazz band version, with pianist Bramwell Tovey file help

Rhapsody in Blue is a 1924 musical composition written by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. Commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman, the work premiered in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music" on February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York City.^[2][3] Whiteman's band performed the rhapsody with Gershwin playing the piano.^[4] Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grofé orchestrated the rhapsody several times including the 1924 original scoring, the 1926 pit orchestra scoring, and the 1942 symphonic scoring.

The rhapsody is one of Gershwin's most recognizable creations and a key composition that defined the Jazz Age.^[5][6][7] Gershwin's piece inaugurated a new era in America's musical history,^[8] established Gershwin's reputation as an eminent composer, and eventually became one of the most popular of all concert works.^[9] In the American Heritage magazine, Frederic D. Schwarz posits that the famous opening clarinet glissando has become as instantly recognizable to concert audiences as the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.^[10]

History

Commission

Further information: George Gershwin and Paul Whiteman

Bandleader Paul Whiteman (left) and composer George Gershwin (right)

Following the success of an experimental classical-jazz concert held with Canadian singer Éva Gauthier in New York City on November 1, 1923, bandleader Paul Whiteman decided to attempt a more ambitious feat.^[2] He asked composer George Gershwin to write a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz concert in honor of Lincoln's Birthday to be given at Aeolian Hall.^[11] Whiteman became fixated upon performing such an extended composition by Gershwin after he collaborated with him in The Scandals of 1922.^[12] He had been especially impressed by Gershwin's one-act "jazz opera" Blue Monday.^[13] Gershwin initially declined Whiteman's request on the grounds that—as there would likely be a need for revisions to the score—he would have insufficient time to compose the work.^[14]

Soon after, on the evening of January 3, George Gershwin and lyricist Buddy DeSylva were playing billiards at the Ambassador Billiard Parlor at Broadway and 52nd Street in Manhattan.^[15] Their game was interrupted by Ira Gershwin, George's brother, who had been reading the January 4 edition of the New-York Tribune.^[16] An unsigned article entitled "What Is American Music?" about an upcoming Whiteman concert had caught Ira's attention.^[15] The article falsely declared that George Gershwin was already "at work on a jazz concerto" for Whiteman's concert.^[17]

Gershwin was puzzled by the news announcement as he had politely declined to compose any such work for Whiteman.^[18][19] In a telephone conversation with Whiteman the next morning, Gershwin was informed that Whiteman's arch rival Vincent Lopez was planning to steal the idea of his experimental concert and there was no time to lose.^[20] Gershwin was thus finally persuaded by Whiteman to compose the piece.^[20]

Composition

With only five weeks remaining until the premiere, Gershwin hurriedly set about composing the work.^[15] He later claimed that, while on a train journey to Boston, the thematic seeds for Rhapsody in Blue began to germinate in his mind.^[21][20] He told biographer Isaac Goldberg in 1931:

It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer.... I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. And there I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.^[21]

Gershwin began composing on January 7 as dated on the original manuscript for two pianos.^[2] He tentatively entitled the piece as American Rhapsody during its composition.^[22] The revised title Rhapsody in Blue was suggested by Ira Gershwin after his visit to a gallery exhibition of James McNeill Whistler paintings, which had titles such as Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket and Arrangement in Grey and Black.^[22][23] After a few weeks, Gershwin finished his composition and passed the score, titled A Rhapsody in Blue, to Ferde Grofé, Whiteman's arranger.^[24] Grofé finished orchestrating the piece on February 4—a mere eight days before the premiere.^[24]

Premiere

The Rhapsody premiered on a snowy afternoon at Aeolian Hall, Manhattan, pictured here in 1923.

Rhapsody in Blue premiered during a snowy afternoon on Tuesday, February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall, Manhattan.^[4][25] Entitled "An Experiment in Modern Music,"^[3] the much-anticipated concert held by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra drew a "packed audience."^[4][26] The excited audience consisted of "vaudevillians, concert managers come to have a look at the novelty, Tin Pan Alleyites, composers, symphony and opera stars, flappers, cake-eaters, all mixed up higgledy-piggledy."^[25] Many influential figures of the era were present, including Carl Van Vechten,^[8] Marguerite d'Alvarez,^[8] Victor Herbert,^[27] Walter Damrosch,^[27] Igor Stravinsky,^[28] Fritz Kreisler,^[28] Leopold Stokowski,^[28] John Philip Sousa,^[29] and Willie "the Lion" Smith.^[29]

In a pre-concert lecture, Whiteman's manager Hugh C. Ernst proclaimed the purpose of the concert was "to be purely educational".^[30][31] The selected music was intended to exemplify the "melodies, harmony and rhythms which agitate the throbbing emotional resources of this young restless age."^[32] The concert's program was lengthy with 26 separate musical movements, divided into 2 parts and 11 sections, bearing titles such as "True Form Of Jazz" and "Contrast—Legitimate Scoring vs. Jazzing."^[33] In the program's schedule, Gershwin's rhapsody was merely the penultimate piece and preceded Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.^[34]

Many of the early numbers in the program reportedly underwhelmed the audience, and the ventilation system in the concert hall malfunctioned.^[35] Some audience members were departing for the exits by the time Gershwin made his inconspicuous entrance for the rhapsody.^[35] The audience purportedly were irritable, impatient, and restless until the haunting clarinet glissando that opened Rhapsody in Blue was heard.^[3][36] The distinctive glissando had been created quite by happenstance during rehearsals:

As a joke on Gershwin.... [Ross] Gorman [Whiteman's virtuoso clarinetist] played the opening measure with a noticeable glissando, 'stretching' the notes out and adding what he considered a jazzy, humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favorably to Gorman's whimsy, Gershwin asked him to perform the opening measure that way.... and to add as much of a 'wail' as possible.^[37]

The rhapsody was then performed by Whiteman's orchestra consisting of "twenty-three musicians in the ensemble" with George Gershwin on piano.^[38][39] In characteristic style, Gershwin chose to partially improvise his piano solo.^[39] The orchestra anxiously waited for Gershwin's nod which signaled the end of his piano solo and the cue for the ensemble to resume playing.^[39] As Gershwin improvised some of what he was playing, the solo piano section was not technically written until after the performance, and it remains unknown exactly how the original rhapsody sounded at the premiere.^[40]

Audience reaction and success

Carl Van Vechten, Marguerite d'Alvarez, and Victor Herbert were among the many eminent persons in the audience.

Upon the conclusion of the rhapsody, there was "tumultuous applause for Gershwin's composition,"^[4][41] and, quite unexpectedly, "the concert, in every respect but the financial,^[a] was a 'knockout'."^[43] The concert quickly became historically significant due to the premiere of the rhapsody, and its program would "become not only a historic document, finding its way into foreign monographs on jazz, but a rarity as well."^[25]

Following the success of rhapsody's premiere, future performances followed. The first British performance of Rhapsody in Blue took place at the Savoy Hotel in London on June 15, 1925.^[44] It was broadcast in a live relay by the BBC. Debroy Somers conducted the Savoy Orpheans with Gershwin himself at the piano.^[44] The piece was heard again in the United Kingdom during the second European tour of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, most notably on April 11, 1926, at the Royal Albert Hall, with Gershwin in the audience. The Royal Albert Hall concert was recorded—though not issued—by the Gramophone Company/HMV.^[45][46]

By the end of 1927, Whiteman's band had performed Rhapsody in Blue approximately 84 times, and its recording sold a million copies.^[10] For the entire piece to fit onto two sides of a 12-inch record, the rhapsody had to be played at a faster speed than usual in a concert, which gave it a hurried feel and some rubato was lost. Whiteman later adopted the piece as his band's theme song and opened his radio programs with the slogan "Everything new but the Rhapsody in Blue."^[47]

Critical response[edit]

Contemporary reviews[edit]

"Jazz is basically a kind of rhythm plus a kind of instrumentation. But it seems to us that this kind of music is only half alive. Its gorgeous vitality of rhythm and of instrumental color is impaired by melodic and harmonic anemia of the most pernicious kind.... [I] recall the most ambitious piece [of Whiteman's concert], the Rhapsody, and weep over the lifelessness of its melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive."

— Lawrence Gilman, New-York Tribune, February 1924^[48]

In contrast to the warm reception by concert audiences,^[4][43] professional music critics in the press gave the rhapsody decidedly mixed reviews.^[49] Pitts Sanborn declared that the rhapsody "begins with a promising theme well stated" yet "soon runs off into empty passage-work and meaningless repetition."^[41] A number of reviews were particularly negative. One opinionated music critic, Lawrence Gilman—a Richard Wagner enthusiast who would later write a devastating review of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess—harshly criticized the rhapsody as "derivative," "stale," and "inexpressive" in New-York Tribune review on February 13, 1924.^[50][48]

Other reviewers were more positive. Samuel Chotzinoff, music critic of the New York World, conceded that Gershwin's composition had "made an honest woman out of jazz,"^[27] while Henrietta Strauss of The Nation opined that Gershwin had "added a new chapter to our musical history."^[8] Olin Downes, reviewing the concert in The New York Times, wrote:

This composition shows extraordinary talent, as it shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master.... In spite of all this, he has expressed himself in a significant and, on the whole, highly original form.... His first theme... is no mere dance-tune... it is an idea, or several ideas, correlated and combined in varying and contrasting rhythms that immediately intrigue the listener. The second theme is more after the manner of some of Mr. Gershwin's colleagues. Tuttis are too long, cadenzas are too long, the peroration at the end loses a large measure of the wildness and magnificence it could easily have had if it were more broadly prepared, and, for all that, the audience was stirred and many a hardened concertgoer excited with the sensation of a new talent finding its voice.^[4]

Overall, a recurrent criticism leveled by professional music critics was that Gershwin's piece was essentially formless and that he had haphazardly glued melodic segments together.^[51]

Retrospective reviews[edit]

Years after its premiere, Rhapsody in Blue continued to divide music critics principally due to its perceived melodic incoherence.^[52][53][54] Constant Lambert, a British composer whose work was also influenced by jazz, was openly dismissive towards the work:

The composer [George Gershwin], trying to write a Lisztian concerto in a jazz style, has used only the non-barbaric elements in dance music, the result being neither good jazz nor good Liszt, and in no sense of the word a good concerto.^[52]

In an article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1955, Leonard Bernstein, who nevertheless admitted that he adored the piece,^[53] stated:

Rhapsody in Blue is not a real composition in the sense that whatever happens in it must seem inevitable, or even pretty inevitable. You can cut out parts of it without affecting the whole in any way except to make it shorter. You can remove any of these stuck-together sections and the piece still goes on as bravely as before. You can even interchange these sections with one another and no harm done. You can make cuts within a section, or add new cadenzas, or play it with any combination of instruments or on the piano alone; it can be a five-minute piece or a six-minute piece or a twelve-minute piece. And in fact all these things are being done to it every day. It's still the Rhapsody in Blue.^[53][54]

Orchestration[edit]

Ferde Grofé, Whiteman's chief arranger from 1920 to 1932, created the first arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

As Gershwin did not have sufficient knowledge of orchestration in 1924,^[55] Ferde Grofé—Whiteman's pianist and chief arranger—was a key figure in enabling the rhapsody's meteoric success,^[56] and critics have contended that Grofé's arrangements of the Rhapsody secured its place in American culture.^[57] Gershwin's biographer, Isaac Goldberg, noted in 1931 that Grofé played a crucial role in the premiere's triumph:

In the heat of the occasion, the contribution of Ferdie Grofé, the arranger on the Whiteman staff who had scored the Rhapsody in ten days, was overlooked or ignored. It is true that an appreciable part of the scoring had been indicated by Gershwin; nevertheless, the contribution of Grofé was of prime importance, not only to the composition, but to the jazz scoring of the immediate future.^[56]

Grofé's familiarity with the Whiteman band's strengths was a key factor in his 1924 scoring.^[58] This orchestration was developed for solo piano and Whiteman's twenty-three musicians.^[59] For the reeds section, Ross Gorman (Reed I) played an oboe, a heckelphone, a clarinet in B♭, sopranino saxophones in E♭ & B♭, an alto saxophone, one E♭ soprano clarinet, and alto and bass clarinets; Donald Clark (Reed II) played a soprano saxophone in B♭, alto and baritone saxophones, and Hale Byers (Reed III) played soprano saxophone in B♭, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, and a flute.^[59]

For the brass section, two trumpets in B♭ were played by Henry Busse and Frank Siegrist; two French horns in F were played by Arturo Cerino and Al Corrado; two trombones were played by Roy Maxon and James Casseday, and a tuba and a double bass played by Guss Helleburg and Albert Armer respectively.^{[59][60][61][43]}

The percussion section included a drum set, timpani, and a glockenspiel played by George Marsh; one piano typically played by either Ferde Grofé or Henry Lange; one tenor banjo played by Michael Pingatore, and a complement of violins.^[62]

This original arrangement—with its unique instrumental requirements—was largely ignored until its revival in reconstructions beginning in the mid-1980s, owing to the popularity and serviceability of the later scorings.^[63] After the 1924 premiere, Grofé revised the score and made new orchestrations in 1926 and 1942, each time for larger orchestras.^[63] His arrangement for a theater orchestra was published in 1926.^[64] This adaptation was orchestrated for a more standard "pit orchestra," which included one flute, one oboe, two clarinets, one bassoon, three saxophones; two French horns, two trumpets, and two trombones; as well as the same percussion and strings complement as the later 1942 version.^[65]

3:44

Paul Whiteman again performed Rhapsody in Blue in the film King of Jazz (1930), arranged by Grofé.

The later 1942 arrangement by Grofé was for a full symphony orchestra. It is scored for solo piano and an orchestra consisting of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B♭ and A, one bass clarinet, two bassoons, two alto saxophones in E♭, one tenor saxophone in B♭; three French horns in F, three trumpets in B♭, three trombones, one tuba; a percussion section that includes timpani, one suspended cymbal, one snare drum, one bass drum, one tam-tam, one triangle, one glockenspiel, and cymbals; one tenor banjo; and strings. Since the mid-20th century, this 1942 version was the arrangement usually performed by classical orchestras and became a staple of the concert repertoire until 1976 when Michael Tilson Thomas recorded the original jazz band version for the first time, employing Gershwin's actual 1925 piano roll with a full jazz orchestra.^[63]

Grofé's other arrangements of Gershwin's piece include those done for Whiteman's 1930 film, King of Jazz,^[66] and the concert band setting (playable without piano) completed by 1938 and published 1942. The prominence of the saxophones in the later orchestrations is somewhat reduced, and the banjo part can be dispensed with, as its mainly rhythmic contribution is provided by the inner strings.^[67]

Gershwin himself made versions of the piece for solo piano as well as two pianos.^[68] The solo version is notable for omitting several sections of the piece.^[b] Gershwin's intent to eventually do an orchestration of his own is documented in 1936–37 correspondence from the publisher Harms.^[69]

Notable recordings

Late 1930s reissue of the 1927 electrical release of Rhapsody in Blue as Victor 35822A by Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra with George Gershwin on piano. 1974 Grammy Hall of Fame inductee.

After the warm reception of Rhapsody in Blue by the audience at Aeolian Hall, Gershwin recorded several abridged versions of his composition in different formats.^[70] On June 10, 1924, Gershwin and Whiteman's orchestra created an acoustic recording running 8 minutes and 59 seconds and produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company.^[c][72] A year later, Gershwin recorded his performance on a 1925 piano roll for a two-piano version.^[73] Later, on April 21, 1927, he made an electrical recording with Whiteman's orchestra running 9 minutes and 1 second and again produced by Victor.^[d][74] Nathaniel Shilkret purportedly conducted the electrical recording after a dispute between Gershwin and Whiteman.^[75] Whiteman's orchestra later performed a truncated version of the piece in the 1930 film The King of Jazz with Roy Bargy on piano.^[76]

Due to the length limitations of early recording formats, it was not until the Great Depression that the first complete and unabridged recording of Gershwin's composition could be undertaken. In July 1935, after several years of performing the rhapsody for sold-out audiences in Massachusetts,^[77] conductor Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra recorded the first unabridged version—nearly fourteen minutes in length—with Puerto Rican pianist Jesús María Sanromá for RCA Victor.^[e][78] For this first unabridged recording, Fiedler discarded Ferde Grofé's original 1924 arrangement and adapted the piece for a conventional symphony.^[79] At the time, contemporary critics praised Fiedler for jettisoning the so-called "jazzy sentimentality" of Grofé's earlier arrangement and adding a "more symphonic richness and authority."^[80]

During the final months of World War II, amid the box-office success of the Gershwin biographical film Rhapsody in Blue (1945), pianist Oscar Levant recorded the now iconic composition with Eugene Ormandy's Philadelphia Orchestra on August 21, 1945.^[81] Levant had been an intimate friend of the deceased composer,^[82][83] and he sought to replicate Gershwin's idiomatic playing style in his performance.^[84] Levant's homage—labelled Columbia Masterworks 251—received rapturous reviews and became one of the best-selling record albums of the year.^[85] As a result of Levant's recording and the 1945 biographical film about Gershwin's life, a "Gershwin revival" ensued.

By the 1960s and 1970s, Gershwin's rhapsody had become a predictable staple of both concert performances and orchestra recordings; consequently, more diverse and irreverent interpretations appeared over time. In Summer 1973, Brazilian jazz-rock artist Eumir Deodato reinterpreted Gershwin's rhapsody in an abridged version that featured uptempo neo‐samba rhythms.^[86] Although music critics derided Deodato's interpretation as "mangled" and barely recognizable,^[87] his single reached No. 45 on the "Hot 100" and No. 10 on "Easy Listening" on the Billboard charts,^[88] and No. 48 and No. 13 respectively in Canada.^[89][90] In the wake of Deodato's earlier reinterpretation, French pianist Richard Clayderman recorded a similarly abridged disco arrangement in 1978 which became one of his signature pieces.^[91][92]

Concurrent with the emergence of these more diverse interpretations, scholarly interest revived in the original 1924 arrangement by Ferde Grofé which had not been performed since the end of the Jazz Age. On February 14, 1973, conductor Kenneth Kiesler and pianist Paul Verrette performed Grofé's original arrangement on the University of New Hampshire campus.^[93] Soon after, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the Columbia Jazz Band recorded Grofé's arrangement in 1976, as did conductor Maurice Peress with pianist Ivan Davis in 1984 as part of a 60th-anniversary reconstruction of the entire 1924 concert.^[94]

Nearly a hundred years after the debut of Gershwin's rhapsody in 1924, tens of thousands of orchestras as well as solo pianists have recorded the enduring composition, both abridged and unabridged, to the delight of audiences. A number of these recordings have garnered critical recognition such as pianist Michel Camilo's 2006 rendition which won a Latin Grammy Award.^[95]

Form and analysis

The opening bars of Gershwin's score for the rhapsody, often referred to as the "Glissando theme".

As a jazz concerto, Rhapsody in Blue is written for solo piano with orchestra.^[96] A rhapsody differs from a concerto in that it features one extended movement instead of separate movements. Rhapsodies often incorporate passages of an improvisatory nature—although written out in a score—and are irregular in form, with heightened contrasts and emotional exuberance. The music ranges from intensely rhythmic piano solos to slow, broad, and richly orchestrated sections. Consequently, the Rhapsody "may be looked upon as a fantasia, with no strict fidelity to form."^[97]

The opening of Rhapsody in Blue is written as a clarinet trill followed by a legato, 17 notes in a diatonic scale. During a rehearsal, Whiteman's virtuoso clarinetist, Ross Gorman, rendered the upper portion of the scale as a captivating and trombone-like glissando.^[98] Gershwin heard it and insisted that it be repeated in the performance.^[98] The effect is produced using the tongue and throat muscles to change the resonance of the oral cavity, thus controlling the continuously rising pitch.^[99] Many clarinet players gradually open the left-hand tone holes on their instrument during the passage from the last concert F to the top concert B♭ as well. This effect has now become standard performance practice for the work.^[99]

Rhapsody in Blue features both rhythmic invention and melodic inspiration, and demonstrates Gershwin's ability to write a piece with large-scale harmonic and melodic structure. The piece is characterized by strong motivic inter-relatedness.^[100] Much of the motivic material is introduced in the first 14 measures.^[100] Musicologist David Schiff has identified five major themes plus a sixth "tag".^[22] Two themes appear in the first 14 measures, and the tag shows up in measure 19.^[22] Two of the remaining three themes are rhythmically related to the very first theme in measure 2, which is sometimes called the "Glissando theme"—after the opening glissando in the clarinet solo—or the "Ritornello theme".^[22][101] The remaining theme is the "Train theme",^[22][102] which is the first to appear at rehearsal 9 after the opening material.^[102] All of these themes rely on the blues scale,^[103] which includes lowered sevenths and a mixture of major and minor thirds.^[103] Each theme appears both in orchestrated form and as a piano solo. There are considerable differences in the style of presentation of each theme.

"Rhapsody in Blue" (Cover)

15:54

A 2018 piano solo cover of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue

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Problems playing this file? See media help.

The harmonic structure of the rhapsody is more difficult to analyze.^[104] The piece begins and ends in B♭ major, but it modulates towards the sub-dominant direction very early on, returning to B♭ major at the end, rather abruptly.^[105] The opening modulates "downward", as it were, through the keys B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, B, E, and finally to A major.^[105] Modulation through the circle of fifths in the reverse direction inverts classical tonal relationships, but does not abandon them. The entire middle section resides primarily in C major, with forays into G major (the dominant relation).^[106] Such modulations occur freely, although not always with harmonic direction. Gershwin frequently uses a recursive harmonic progression of minor thirds to give the illusion of motion when in fact a passage does not change key from beginning to end.^[104] Modulation by thirds is a common feature of Tin Pan Alley music.

The influences of jazz and other contemporary styles are present in Rhapsody in Blue. Ragtime rhythms are abundant,^[103] as is the Cuban "clave" rhythm, which doubles as a dance rhythm in the Charleston jazz dance.^[49] Gershwin's own intentions were to correct the belief that jazz had to be played strictly in time so that one could dance to it.^[107] The rhapsody's tempos vary widely, and there is an almost extreme use of rubato in many places throughout. The clearest influence of jazz is the use of blue notes, and the exploration of their half-step relationship plays a key role in the rhapsody.^[108] The use of so-called "vernacular" instruments, such as accordion, banjo, and saxophones in the orchestra, contribute to its jazz or popular style, and the latter two of these instruments have remained part of Grofé's "standard" orchestra scoring.^[67]

Gershwin incorporated several different piano styles into his work. He used the techniques of stride piano, novelty piano, comic piano, and the song-plugger piano style. Stride piano's rhythmic and improvisational style is evident in the "agitato e misterioso" section, which begins four bars after rehearsal 33, as well as in other sections, many of which include the orchestra.^[102] Novelty piano can be heard at rehearsal 9 with the revelation of the Train theme. The hesitations and light-hearted style of comic piano, a vaudeville approach to piano made well known by Chico Marx and Jimmy Durante, are evident at rehearsal 22.

George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue - Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic (1976)