When conductor Paul Whiteman commissioned Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the composer was not enthusiastic. In fact, he was already occupied with writing his comedy Sweet Little Devil. But when he discovered that the New York Tribune announced, without his knowledge, that “George Gershwin is working on a jazz concerto,” he set to work immediately! Completed in a few days, Rhapsody in Blue successfully premiered in 1924 at Aeolian Hall in New York in the presence of composers such as Kreisler, Stravinsky, Rachmananinov, and Stokowski. The original title should have been American Rhapsody, as the composition is very representative of the metropolitan culture of New York city. Gershwin declared that the program was conceived as “a sort of multichrome fantasy, an American kaleidoscopic musical, with our [...] blues, our metropolitan madness.” Merging jazz and classical music, Rhapsody in Blue is one of the most representative works of New York’s melting pot!
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Stream George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on medici.tv!
medici.tv is the best online platform for streaming Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue live, on replay or VOD, offering you a virtual ticket to the most exciting concerts with the world’s best artists and orchestras captured in HD video. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue celebrates the different souls that bring American culture to life: one finds elements of the blues, jazz, but also the greatness of classical symphonies. Take a stroll through the streets of Brooklyn, touch the top of the Empire State Building, shake hands with the Statue of Liberty: on medici.tv, Rhapsody in Blue opens the doors of the Big Apple!
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A selection of our programs is available for free for all registered users and the rest can be unlocked with a subscription, including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Live videos, replays or VOD, stream right to your living room from the most renowned concert halls in the world, and you can watch our concerts on your biggest screens with AirPlay, Chromecast, and our new Roku app. What are you waiting for? Come and discover the best interpretations of Rhapsody in Blue, conducted by musicians such as Tarmo Peltokoski, Kent Nagano, and Gustavo Dudamel!
The greatest artists of our time perform Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on medici.tv, the best classical streaming platform
“Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Eh uh, no, make that he, he romanticized it all out of proportion. Better. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin…” That is how American romantic comedy Manhattan starts, a film which has a soundtrack dominated by Rhapsody in Blue! Allen wanted to create a sentimental portrait of his hometown, and to do that, he couldn’t help but think of Gershwin. Rhapsody in Blue is a musical declaration of love to the Big Apple, which blends all the musical influences that animated New York during the 1920s. In Manhattan, different compositions by George Gershwin are interpreted by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta, and by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under Michal Tilson Thomas, but on medici.tv, you can find a melting pot of other interpretations!