Variations on "I Got Rhythm"

The piece opens with a short introduction before the piano lays out the "I Got Rhythm" tune plainly, so a listener knows exactly what melody the rest of the piece will play with. From there Gershwin spins out four variations, each giving the tune a different personality: a hot, syncopated jazz treatment, a passage that leans toward a mock-exotic or "Oriental" color, a coy, waltz-like slowing down of the same tune into three-beat time, and a flashy, virtuosic variation that pushes the pianist's technique. A grand, symphonic finale brings the tune back one last time at full orchestral weight. Because Gershwin himself premiered the piece as soloist on a cross-country tour, it is written to put the pianist front and center throughout, trading lines with the orchestra rather than simply accompanying it. Listen for how recognizable "I Got Rhythm" stays even as its rhythm, harmony, and mood keep changing around it.

Gershwin wrote most of this piece during a three-week vacation in Palm Beach in late 1933, finishing it on January 6, 1934, after returning to New York. He built it around his own song "I Got Rhythm," from his 1930 Broadway show Girl Crazy, as a way to give himself a substantial solo turn on an upcoming concert tour. The piece was premiered on January 14, 1934, at Symphony Hall in Boston, with Gershwin himself at the piano and the Leo Reisman Orchestra conducted by Charles Previn. The tour that followed covered about two dozen cities and some 12,000 miles, ending at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 10, 1934.