“Some of Gershwin’s finest inspirations have not as yet been either published or publicly performed. It is probable that the production of his twenty-four preludes … will award him a still higher rank in the army of contemporary composers.” In 1925, an admirer thus heralded George Gershwin’s ambitious project in Vanity Fair, namely to compose preludes in all keys as Bach and Chopin had done before. On 4 December of the following year, the composer publicly performed five of these pieces. However...