Between jazz and twelve-tone – and on the tennis court: Gershwin in Vienna tells the surprising yet true story of the friendship between George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg, who in 1930s California were connected not only artistically but also as tennis partners.

Levi Hammer follows this trail, placing Gershwin’s piano works in a compelling dialogue with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, making audible just how closely the American superstar was intertwined with the aesthetics of the Second Viennese School. Encounters such as Gershwin’s legendary visit to Alban Berg in Vienna or Schoenberg’s moving 1937 tribute open up a fascinating panorama of mutual influence. The result is a portrait of Gershwin as a modernist – and of a Viennese avant-garde that suddenly seems strikingly close to Broadway.