Description
Although the American composer George Gershwin is perhaps best known for his jazz-inspired musicals, which he wrote largely in collaboration with his lyricist brother Ira, he also penned a number of other ‘serious’ works including the immensely popular Rhapsody in Blue, a Piano Concerto, and the opera Porgy and Bess. In 1936, following the completion of Porgy and Bess, Gershwin moved back to Hollywood and was quickly in demand as a film score writer. Walking the Dog, or Promenade as it later also became known, was written as an instrumental number for Shall We Dance – the seventh movie pairing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The music accompanies a sequence of walking a dog aboard a transatlantic ocean liner. It was written in 1936, not long before his tragically untimely death, aged just 38.
Walking the Dog was originally written for piano and chamber orchestra, although it was later re-orchestrated with the clarinet taking centre stage.
For copyright reasons this arrangement is not available to buy in the USA
