from Three Preludes for piano (1923–26)

from Three Preludes for piano (1923–26)

1 Allegro ben ritmico e deciso

2 Andante con moto e poco rubato

Gershwin wrote as many as six preludes for piano: he performed five of them himself at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York in 1926 and added another in Boston a year later.. On publication, however, he released only three of them, choosing to make a central feature of the Andante and to frame it with two Allegro pieces. That symmetrical sequence is an appropriate reflection of the ternary construction of each of the the individual preludes. The vigorous opening Allegro ben ritmico e deciso most effectively offsets the lazy, bluesy Andante lullaby, the opening left-hand figuration of which suggests that Gershwin might have had Chopin in mind when he was thinking about writing his piano preludes.