Today, I’m geeking out about one of my favorite composers/songwriters of all time, George Gershwin. Rhapsody in Blue has long been one of the pieces of music that’s been a touchstone for me. It reminds me of winter afternoons in my parents’ living room listening to their records on the console stereo and of happy days Christmas shopping with my mother in Macy’s Herald Square. It just feels like home to me, and always has. I assumed Rhapsody in Blue was something of a Gershwin one-off, the only composition of its kind that Gershwin penned. I am beyond delighted to tell you (as you may already know) that I was WRONG. There’s more!

Here’s how I made this happy discovery. I have been truly enjoying the various snippets of actor Sean Hayes warming up/testing the pianos in preparation for his performances in Good Night, Oscar, a show based on the life of Oscar Levant currently running on London’s West End. (Side note: it apparently originated on Broadway 2 years ago, and I missed it. Rats!) In addition to his brilliant comedy timing and acting chops, the amazing Hayes is also a wildly-talented classical pianist. It would be easy to go off on a tangent about my darling Sean Hayes, but today, we’re on Gershwin, darn it.

Anyway, back to George. Three Preludes for Piano was written and first performed by Gershwin at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC in 1926. Though there are heavy jazz elements, these compositions are widely-known as great examples of American classical music. Though Gershwin wrote other pieces in this genre including his Piano Concerto in F Major, Three Preludes were the only classical pieces Gershwin ever wrote specifically as piano solos. In fact, George wrote the Preludes as the first set of a projected series of 24 which he called The Melting Pot. The 24 preludes were reduced to just 7 in manuscript form, then reduced further to 6 in public performance. However, since his publisher decided only the 3 we are talking about today were worthy of publishing, declaring the others too similar to prior Gershwin works. How is that a bad thing? I guess I should be grateful that anything survived at all. Sheesh! Can you imagine telling someone as impossibly-talented as GEORGE GERSHWIN, “Nah. We’re not going to publish these 21 pieces.” The nerve!

Anyway, here without further fan girling is George Gershwin’s Three Preludes for Piano. They’re short, so if you’re like me, you may find yourself hitting replay a number of times so you don’t miss anything.

And just for good measure, here’s a lovely example of the piano prowess of the incomparable Sean Hayes.

You can follow Sean Hayes on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook and on the Smartless podcast YouTube channel. I may write about Smartless another day. They’re fun!