PROGRAM NOTES
by Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Variations on “I Got Rhythm”
George Gershwin (1898-1937)

Composed in 1933-1934.
Premiered on January 14, 1934 in Boston, conducted by Charles Previn with the composer as soloist.

The celebrated stage director Rouben Mamoulian, who directed the original 1927 stage version of DuBose Heyward’s Porgy on which George Gershwin based his opera Porgy and Bess, once said of Gershwin, “I’ve heard many pianists and composers play for informal gatherings, but I know of no one who did it with such genuine delight and verve.... He could play I Got Rhythm for the thousandth time, yet do it with such freshness and exuberance as if he had written it the night before.” It was for a concert tour in 1934 that Gershwin immortalized some of his informal extemporizations as the Variations on “I Got Rhythm,” the hit song from his 1930 Broadway show, Girl Crazy. The tour was a series of one-night stands with the thirty-piece Leo Reisman Orchestra, conducted by Charles Previn (great-uncle of André and later director of music at Universal Studios), that began at Boston’s Symphony Hall on January 14th, wound through Toronto, Omaha, Richmond and two-dozen other cities, and ended, after 12,000 miles, at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music on February 10th. On each concert, Gershwin conducted An American in Paris, was soloist in the Concerto in F and the Rhapsody in Blue, and accompanied tenor James Melton in a selection of his songs. The “I Got Rhythm” Variations, written expressly for the tour, gives some indication of the breadth and imagination that Gershwin must have displayed in his improvisations — hot jazz, mock Orientalism, coy waltz, virtuoso bravura and grand symphonism all find a place here.

MORE NOTES ON THIS PROGRAM

COPLAND - Billy the Kid Suite
FORTNER - Fantasma (World Premiere)
ADAMS - The Chairman Dances
CRESTON - Symphony No. 2
GERSHWIN - Rhapsody in Blue

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