It was George Gershwin's practice to compose his music at the piano and then write an arrangement of it for two pianos as a sort of intermediate step preparatory to orchestrating it. Two-piano versions thus exist, if mostly in obscurity, of much of his work. The difference is this case is, the version took a detour and remained in hiding for over fifty years. In January of 1928, Gershwin began serious work on a concert piece which was to be an orchestral work without the customary piano part he wrote in many of his works for himself. Hoping both for less distraction and more inspiration than he was finding in New York, Gershwin went to Paris in March and, even amid the usual whirlwind of parties, rich food, and socializing, buckled down to serious composing. He returned to New York in mid June and the two-piano version was pronounced complete on the first of August. During the orchestration process, the work was shortened by about five minutes and premiered on 13 December. In early 1929, it was being readied for publication when, curiously, Gershwin did not publish the two-piano version but instead made a gift of it to his publisher and no more was heard of it for decades. In 1980, Gershwin's surviving brother Ira received a gift recording in the mail of a performance of the two-piano version of two of George's other works, Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F, performed by young French duo pianists Marielle and Katia LaBèque. At their urging, Ira located and purchased the original two-piano score and its world premiere performance and recording at their hands followed in 1984. Musically, the work is a two-piano transcription of the familiar orchestral work or, to be more precise, the source from which the orchestral transcription was extracted. Listening to it reveals Gershwin's ready ease and mastery of the piano and only listeners intimately familiar with the orchestral version will spot the restored five minutes.

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