George Gershwin must have spent nearly all his life with the word “genius” echoing round his head. Charles Hambitzer, his first serious piano teacher introduced the habit as early as 1912. “The boy is a genius, without a doubt”, he stated, when George had only just stopped being, on his own admission, a “bad boy” on the streets of Brooklyn. It would seem that the rest of his personality never quite caught up with Gershwin’s genius, a fact of which he was aware. In certain areas, he could try to correct the mismatch – in music theory, for example, the lack of which he felt keenly. Everywhere he went in the world, he would look for a teacher, hence the too-famous story of Ravel (if it was Ravel: some say Stravinsky) who when petitioned for instruction by Gershwin, asked him how much money he was making. He quoted such a spectacular figure that Ravel remarked it was Gershwin who should be giving the lessons. Most composers will hide their deficiencies, out of a pride that may turn eventually into pomposity. But Gershwin, touchingly, almost advertised his. When he was commissioned to write the Concerto in F in 1925, everybody knew, because he told them, that he’d bought some reference books so as to find out what form the typical concerto took.
