On a snowy Lincoln’s birthday 100 years ago, bandleader Paul Whiteman put on “An Experiment in Modern Music” at Aeolian Hall in New York City. His vastly ambitious, decidedly quirky program (it began with “Livery Stable Blues” and closed with Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1) traced the evolution of jazz to that point and projected its intersection with the classical world. In the penultimate spot was the premiere of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with the composer as soloist.
Professional critics were divided in their response, but audiences were not. In the next few months, Gershwin performed the work several more times (including at Carnegie Hall) and took it on a short tour. In June, with Whiteman, he recorded a nine-minute version (due to the limitations of recording formats at the time), which sold over a million copies in three years. The first all-Gershwin program by a classical symphony orchestra was held in summer 1932, at Lewisohn Stadium at what was then the College of the City of New York. At that concert, the composer played Rhapsody in Blue, as well as his Second Rhapsody and a medley of his songs, with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra. Its popularity firmly established, Rhapsody in Blue went on a 10th-anniversary tour in 1934 with Gershwin and the Leo Reisman Orchestra, presented in 28 US and Canadian cities in 29 days.
In July 2024, the Hollywood Bowl celebrated the centennial of Rhapsody in Blue with a program inspired by that 1932 Lewisohn Stadium concert. Lionel Bringuier led the Los Angeles Philharmonic with soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Rhapsody in Blue, and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and Broadway star Tony Yazbeck performed a selection of Gershwin’s greatest songs.
Gershwin and the Bowl are a natural fit, with an illustrious and lengthy history. It began in August 1927, when Toska Tolces, a young American pianist who recorded piano rolls for the American Piano Company, gave the West Coast premiere of Rhapsody in Blue in its new version for full orchestra, with Eugene Goossens conducting. The composer himself had coached Tolces in it.
Gershwin’s music quickly became evergreen at the Bowl, and it was also heard downtown. In February 1937, Gershwin conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic—a second conductor, Alexander Smallens, was brought in to assist—and played piano in two all-Gershwin concerts at Philharmonic Auditorium. Gershwin was showing symptoms of the brain tumor that would kill him a few months later: During rehearsal, he fell off the podium, caught by his valet Paul Mueller before he hit the floor, and at the second concert he had an unaccustomed memory lapse in the Concerto in F.
In July of that year, Gershwin died in Los Angeles at age 38, following emergency surgery for the tumor. Two months later, on September 8, 1937, a massive memorial concert was held at the Bowl and broadcast live around the world. The Los Angeles Philharmonic performed, and a musical and Hollywood who’s who, including Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, Edward G. Robinson, Lily Pons, José Iturbi, and LA Phil Music Director Otto Klemperer, paid tribute. More than 22,000 people jammed Highland Avenue as they tried to make their way to the Bowl; Astaire, it was reported, abandoned motor transport and walked up to the amphitheater.
Gershwin, the LA Phil, and the Hollywood Bowl have been together ever since, at least in musical spirit. Highlights include Leonard Pennario’s recording of Rhapsody in Blue with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra under Felix Slatkin in 1959. In 1981, Dudley Moore played Rhapsody in Blue with the LA Phil under MTT, in an all-Gershwin program that was taped for subsequent telecast on A&E Television. This was followed by two recordings with the LA Phil and two of its stellar guests, Leonard Bernstein (1983) and Michael Tilson Thomas (1985), both of whom led the orchestra while playing the demanding solo part. In 1992, The Gershwins in Hollywood, the second album for John Mauceri and the recently revived Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, was released and won a Deutscher Schallplattenpreis.
To call out a more recent high point, Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil opened the 2011/12 Walt Disney Concert Hall season with an all-Gershwin gala, subsequently telecast on PBS’ Great Performances series. Herbie Hancock, the orchestra’s Creative Chair for Jazz, was the soloist, offering improvisations on “Embraceable You” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” before exploring—what else?—Rhapsody in Blue.