The piece
Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue in a few weeks for the concert the bandleader Paul Whiteman gave in New York on 12 February 1924, and he played the piano part himself. It opens with a low clarinet trill that slides in one sweep to the top: one of the most famous openings of the century. The version played here is the one Gershwin wrote for piano solo, published in 1927: its first fifteen bars, up to the arrival in A-flat, with the chord that marks it, held.
The run of the first bar is played freely, in one gesture, faster and faster towards the top. Then the theme wavers between two neighbouring notes, in grace notes and light triplets: keep its jazzy feel, never stiff. In bars 5 to 9, chords answer off the beat under a held note; mark their accents without covering the tune. In bars 11 to 14, the left hand takes the song, in detached eighths.
