The Best of George Gershwin - String Quartets

By George Gershwin

This 1987 edition features Gershwin's tune "Swanee". In all four parts it begins on page 7 and continues to page 8 where it ends after repeat and dal segno al coda with repeats. To play the tune from these parts, each player has SEVEN page turns, and only the...

2nd violin gets as much as a quarter rest in which to turn at half note = 108. Photocopying, cutting and pasting are necessary to play it at all. I cannot speak to the other pieces. This edition is 28 years old and past due for correction. My quartet members are pros, but no one should have to waste time fixing something that is unplayable from the publisher.

I bought this for our faculty string quartet. Unfortunately it's not usable for us. The arrangement is fairly unsophisticated, however it would be fine for an inexperienced/intermediate level group, or for a quartet gigging at a wedding or someplace where having background music is more important that what...

is played.

It's worth buying for any working quartet. We were hoping for something just a bit jazzier, but the arrangements are lovely nonetheless--the melody is shared between the instruments enough so that "the other three" will actually want to play it. 'Someone to Watch Over Me' was an instant...

hit, the rest of them are just as good arrangements. It seems absurd to classify 'Swanee' as one of Gershwin's "best"; it was mostly abandoned by the music world sometime in the early thirties and should have been left at that.

Very nice arragements of Gershwin's most popular love songs. Very appropriate for weddings. Shares melody between first violin and cello frequently. Fingering/ position suggestions really arn't necessary at this level and it is over edited, but may be useful to middle level players

[...] These arrangements add to Gershwin's music a new flavour that makes them sound even greater than you are normally used to anyway.