'Rhapsody in Blue' on the program for WVSO concert at WVU

“It’s just such an iconic work. People know it without knowing necessarily what it is. So it’s a phenomenal work. There is a reason it’s played so much. It’s great.”

Woody Allen used the song not as the soundtrack for his 1979 film “Manhattan,” but as an opening love letter to New York City, and it also currently can be heard accompanying an airline commercial.

Wolfram will play “Rhapsody in Blue,” along with Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, also a jazz-infused piece from the earlier part of the century, when he appears with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Creative Arts Center on the West Virginia University campus in Morgantown.

The event marks the first of three performances at WVU by the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Grant Cooper, that will take place this school year.

The orchestra will return to WVU on Dec. 4 for a Holiday Pops program and on March 4 for Brahms’ Requiem, which also will feature choral groups from WVU and Fairmont State that will perform in Morgantown and Charleston.

On Friday, in addition to the two pieces that feature Wolfram, the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra also will play Byron Adams’ “Capriccio Concertante” and Antonin Dvorak’s “Symphony No. 9,” also known as the New World Symphony.

Ironically, even though the program is meant to feature new music — Adams is still living and Dvorak died at the early part of the 20th century — Wolfram does not consider “Rhapsody in Blue” to be that contemporary sounding.

“It depends on whether you go by year or by sound,” he said. “I just played Arnold Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto. Some of his solo works were written at the turn of around the early 1900s and they sound completely contemporary to people.”

In Wolfram’s definition, “contemporary” might not be as accessible to the listener, while of course “Rhapsody in Blue” is quite easy on the ears, a hybrid of jazz and classical music.

“It’s the jazz,” Wolfram said. “The energy is closer to pop culture. That’s the interesting thing about Gershwin. He did a combination of a jazz idiom within a classical form. It’s fascinating. It’s a hybrid. People take to Gershwin across the board.”

Not only does Ravel’s “Piano Concerto” feature jazz influences, but Gershwin and Ravel also once met. According to a story on the website of New York City’s Carnegie Hall, carnegiehall.org, a young Gershwin — he wrote the piece at age 25 — played “Rhapsody in Blue” at Ravel’s 53rd birthday party and then asked the older composer for piano lessons. Ravel declined, telling him, “It is better to write good Gershwin than bad Ravel.”

However, Wolfram noted, “You can hear the influence” that Ravel had on Gershwin.

A native of White Plains, New York, Wolfram, who has played with orchestras all over the world, was encouraged to play piano, starting at the age of 5, by his parents and grandmother.

It took up so much of his time, including Saturdays in the preparatory program at Juilliard, where he also attended college, that he resented it for a time during his childhood.

“After a period of coming close to jettisoning the whole thing, I started to love music and deal with it on my own terms instead of the terms that were imposed on me in my youth,” he said. “Music is something I love, and I’m enormously connected to it.”

For tickets, call (304) 293-SHOW.