George Gershwin : Piano Concerto in F. Roy Bargy and
White- man's Concert Orchestra. (Brunswick. dos. 6d.) FOR anyone with half a guinea to spend on a recorded joke— though a rather stale joke by now—here is a highly recommended set. George Gershwin, who lived from 1898 to 1937, achieved fame and presumably fortune some seventeen years ago through the publication of a highly successful piece entitled Rhapsody in Blue, as a result of which he was for a brief period regarded as a kind of link between musical intellectuals and the devotees of jazz. This work is chiefly remarkable for the ineptitude of its use of the piano in a work labelled piano concerto. The rhythmical incongruities no longer possess the power to startle, and the harmonic effects, which once caused eyebrows to be raised, depress with their obviousness. In an occasional passage there is the glimmering of an original idea, but as a whole the concerto is no more than an anthology of the experiments of the second-rate writers of a past decade. As -such it possesses a certain historic charm.
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