“Rhapsody In Blue” by George Gershwin

Rhapsody in Blue is George Gershwin's 1924 piece for solo piano and jazz band, and it turns up here on the 1990 collection Fantastic Strings. Bandleader Paul Whiteman commissioned it and premiered it on February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall in New York, in a concert billed as "An Experiment in Modern Music", with Whiteman's band behind Gershwin at the piano. Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grofé kept reorchestrating it: the original 1924 scoring, a pit orchestra version in 1926 and a full symphonic one in 1942.

That famous opening clarinet glissando is as recognizable a curtain-raiser as anything in concert music. Mixing classical ambition with jazz swagger, the piece came to define the Jazz Age and made Gershwin's name as a serious composer.

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