Early in 1934, Gershwin needed a new concert piece for a four-week concert tour on which he would be the piano soloist with the renowned Leo Reisman Orchestra. The tour began in mid-January at Boston's Symphony Hall, went as far west as Nebraska, then worked its way back home to a final concert at the Brooklyn Academy. As for the music, Gershwin based his new concert piece on the melody from I Got Rhythm, one of the big hit songs from his 1930 musical Girl Crazy.

In two acts, the storyline of Girl Crazy concerns a Manhattan playboy who rides a taxi all the way to Arizona, where he falls in love with a small town post mistress. Like a modern TV comedy, the stage scenes were chock full of droll confusions, leading to a happy ending. Other well-known songs from the musical include Embraceable You and But Not for Me.

During a recorded radio broadcast after the tour, Gershwin remarked (with his Brooklyn syntax intact):

"Good evening. This is George Gershwin speaking. The orchestra just played my song Mine. And now I'm going to play you my latest composition which I wrote a few months ago down in Palm Beach, Florida. This is a composition in a form of variations on a tune, and the tune is I Got Rhythm.

"I think you might be interested to hear about a few of the variations we are going to play. After an introduction by the orchestra the piano plays a theme rather simply. The first variation is a very complicated rhythmic pattern played by the piano while the orchestra fits in the tune.

"The next variation is in waltz time, and the third is a Chinese variation in which I imitate Chinese flutes that play out of tune as they always are. Next the piano plays a rhythmic variation in which the left hand plays the melody upside down, while the right plays it first on the theory that we shouldn't let one hand know what the other is doing. Then comes the finale. Now, after all this information about Variations on I Got Rhythm, how about hearing it."

Gershwin was keen to scribe his own orchestration for the Variations (the last full score from his desk), penned with one ear on advanced harmony, another on the rich sonorities of modern theater. The opening phrases from the solo clarinet and piano are at first atonal—perhaps a wink towards Schoenberg. In turn, the tune is presented as an up-beat arabesque with savvy accents. The waltz variation offers a slow diversion in triple time, again with progressions closer to the avant-garde than to Broadway. After the quaint caricature of oriental flutes, further harmonic mischief is conjured by the soloist. In evolving steps, the Variations blend into big-screen effects at the final curtain in F major. 'S Wonderful..!

Writer: Edward Yadzinski