On May 9, 11, and 12, the Houston Symphony presents award-winning American pianist George Li in not one, but two virtuoso works for piano and orchestra. In this post, discover how the first of these pieces, George Gershwin’s delightful “I Got Rhythm” Variations, paints a picture of contemporary New York in sound. Get tickets and more information here.
In 1930, the 21-year-old Ethel Merman was hired to play a supporting role in her first Broadway show, a western-themed musical farce called Girl Crazy with music and lyrics by the Gershwin brothers. “It was the first time I’d met George Gershwin,” Merman later recalled. “And if I may say so without seeming sacrilegious, to me it was like meeting God.” Gershwin put the nervous young woman at ease and played through the songs that she would sing in the show. “When he played ‘I Got Rhythm,’ he told me, ‘If there’s anything about this you don’t like, I’ll be happy to change it.’ There was nothing about that song I didn’t like.”
The show catapulted Merman to stardom, and her rendition of “I Got Rhythm” quickly made the song an anthem of the jazz age:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS-cHTSRmFY
Countless artists recorded it, improvising variations on Gershwin’s infectious tune. While on vacation in Florida in December 1933, Gershwin composed his own set of variations on “I Got Rhythm” for piano and orchestra, completing it in advance of a tour with the Leo Reisman Orchestra the following year. You can listen to George Gershwin introduce and play (a slightly abridged version of) the piece himself in this April 1934 radio broadcast:
Because Reisman’s orchestra was an unconventional ensemble with many musicians who played multiple instruments, the piece was first published in a version for a more standard orchestra arranged by William C. Schoenfeld. It is this version that is best known today.
A brief introduction based on fragments of the “I Got Rhythm” theme begins the piece, leading to a statement of the theme for piano alone. Six colorful variations ensue, including a slow waltz; a playfully dissonant “Chinese” variation; a soulful, jazzy variation; and a hot, quick variation in which the left hand plays the theme upside-down while the right plays it straight, “on the theory that you shouldn’t let one hand know what the other is doing,” as Gershwin said. Gershwin authority Howard Pollack has suggested that variations form a picturesque depiction of contemporary New York: “a Gershwinesque reading of the industrial metropolis (first variation), ‘young girls sitting on fire escapes on hot summer nights in New York and dreaming of love’ (second variation), Chinatown (third variation), Harlem (fourth variation), and some after-hours club, perhaps with a Cuban band (fifth and sixth variations).” —Calvin Dotsey
Don’t miss Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” Variations May 9, 11, and 12! Visit houstonsymphony.org for tickets and more information.
