Tag Archive for: Viv McLean piano

7 Star Arts invites you to an exclusive performance of George Gershwin’s Concerto in F on the centenary of its premiere in New York (3 December 1925) on Wednesday 3 December 2025.

Performed in the two-piano version by acclaimed Gershwin interpreter Viv McLean and prize-winning young pianist Tyler Hay, the concert takes place in the elegant Bӧsendorfer Hall at Coach House Pianos’ sumptuous London showroom, located in the iconic art deco Talisman Building on New King’s Road.

In addition to the Concerto in F, the programme will include the Rhapsody in Blue together with shorter works by Gershwin.

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Following the success of his Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin was commissioned by conductor Walter Damrosch to compose a concerto. Damrosch was so impressed by the originality of Rhapsody in Blue, he asked Gershwin if he could write a “proper” concerto. The concerto was unlike anything Gershwin had attempted before, and urban legend has it that Gershwin did not know exactly what a concerto was. But he was determined he was determined to orchestrate the “New York Concerto” himself and quickly composed the work over a matter of months in the summer of 1925 in a version for two pianos (the version we hear in this concert). The work was a sophisticated fusion of popular and serious music, confirming Gershwin’s reputation as a composer writing across the boundary of these musical genres.

The Concerto in F received its premiere on 3 December 1925 at Carnegie Hall, New York, with the composer at the piano and Walter Damrosch conducting. It was a great success with the public, but the critics were not fully won over. Sergei Prokofiev found it “amateurish”, while Arnold Schoenberg paid a posthumous tribute to Gershwin “What he has done with rhythm, harmony and melody is not merely style. It is fundamentally different from the mannerism of many a serious composer [who writes] a superficial union of devices applied to a minimum of ideas. …”.

The work is now a staple of the piano repertoire and has been performed and recorded by, amongst others, Daniil Trifonov Sviatoslav Richter, Garrick Ohlsson, Hélène Grimaud, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Peter Jablonksi.