Born in Brooklyn in 1898 to immigrants from Russia, George Gershwin took up the piano at about twelve, on the instrument his parents had bought for his elder brother Ira. At fifteen he left school to play new songs for a New York music publisher. His song Swanee, in 1919, made his name. With Ira writing the words, he composed musical comedies; he also wrote Rhapsody in Blue (1924), the Concerto in F, An American in Paris and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935). He died in Hollywood in 1937, aged thirty-eight.
The catalogue presents the opening of Rhapsody in Blue in the version for piano solo he wrote himself, published in 1927. Play it with an improviser's freedom: the opening run in a single breath, the off-beat accents clearly marked, and the long notes sung as a clarinet would.
