1934, the year in which Gershwin wrote the Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for Piano and Orchestra, some interesting cultural and political events took place: the novels “Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express were published, Pablo Picasso ended his bullfight paintings cicle, American Airlines was created, radar was invented in Germany, and Hitler consolidated his power. In the U.S. in 1934, Gershwin toured with Leo Raisman’s orchestra, composing especially for the tour Variations on “I Got Rhythm,” his hit song from his 1930 Broadway show, Girl Crazy. The tour covered over 12,000 miles, beginning in Boston on January 14, passing through Toronto, Omaha, Richmond, dozens of other cities, and ending at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 10.

Gershwin himself presented the Variations in a radio broadcast and gave a sufficiently schematic explanation, “I wrote my latest composition a few months ago in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s a piece in the form of variations on the tune ‘I Got Rhythm’. I think you might be interested to hear about some of the variations we’ll be playing. After the introduction to the orchestra, the piano plays the theme in its basic form. The first variation is in a very complex rhythm in the piano while the orchestra plays the melody. The next variation is a waltz, and the third is a “Chinese” variation in which I imitate Chinese untempered flutes. The fourth variation is a rhythmic piano variation, where the melody in the left and right hands is in different turnaround so that one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Then comes the finale.”

Apart from the jazz rhythms and harmonies, the references to the waltz genre, to the Asian pentatonic, of which the composer speaks, the reference to the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg (who was a frequent tennis partner of Gershwin) is also evident.

The Variations is dedicated “To my brother Ira” and is Gershwin’s last concert work.