George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26, 1898, and died in Hollywood, California, on July 11, 1937. The first performance of the Piano Concerto in F took place at Carnegie Hall in New York on December 3, 1925, with the composer as soloist and Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra. In addition to the solo piano, the Concerto in F is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, glockenspiel, xylophone, snare drum, woodblock, whip, bass drum, triangle, gong, and strings. Approximate performance time is thirty-one minutes.

On February 12, 1924, bandleader Paul Whiteman presented a special concert at New York’s Aeolian Hall entitled “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Whiteman intended the program as a forum to demonstrate that American jazz was legitimate concert fare that “had come to stay and deserved recognition.” For this landmark event, Whiteman commissioned a new “jazz concerto” by a young pianist/composer who had already experienced great success on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. And so it was that George Gershwin appeared as soloist in the triumphant premiere of his Rhapsody in Blue.

Among those in attendance was Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony. Damrosch was thrilled with Gershwin’s new work, and he decided to convince the New York Symphony to commission a Piano Concerto by the young American pianist and composer. Gershwin began composition of the new Concerto in the summer of 1925. All told, by Gershwin’s account, “It took me three months to compose it and one month to orchestrate it.”

The premiere of Gershwin’s Concerto in F took place at New York’s Carnegie Hall on December 3, 1925. Gershwin was the piano soloist and Damrosch the conductor of the New York Symphony. The audience response was ecstatic, “attested (as one reporter observed) in long and vehement applause, so that Mr. Gershwin was kept bowing for some minutes from the stage.”

The Concerto in F is in three movements. Gershwin provided the following musical analysis, which appeared in the New York Tribune the Sunday before the premiere:

I. Allegro—The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young enthusiastic spirit of American life. It begins with a rhythmic motif given out by the kettledrums, supported by other percussion instruments, and with a Charleston motif introduced by bassoon, horns, clarinets, and violas. The principal theme is introduced by the bassoon. Later, a second theme is introduced by the piano.

II. Adagio; Andante con moto—The second movement has a poetic nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they are usually treated.

III. Allegro agitato—The final movement reverts to the style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythms, starting violently and keeping the same pace throughout.

Program notes by Ken Meltzer