ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOSTON - 'Rhapsody in Blue' is four minutes longer - just the way George Gershwin wrote it.

On Wednesday, the Boston Pops Orchestra premiered a newly restored version of the American classic.

Like the piece Gershwin played for the first time on Feb. 3, 1924, it has 50 more measures than the 'Rhapsody' that has become so famous.

The score was altered in the 1920s by a commercial publisher who thought it was too hard to play.

"Gershwin had built all his little bridges between the parts the way they were supposed to go and his editors just cut it up," said Alicia Zizzo, the concert pianist and composer who searched out Gershwin's original in the Library of Congress and restored it.

The Boston premiere tomorrow is the first public performance of the restored 'Rhapsody' in its entirety.

A fragment was performed in April in Connecticut, and a compact disc recorded by Zizzo was released by the London-based Carlton Classics this month.

Jeffrey Biegel, the guest pianist Wednesday, said it was a pleasure not to play the "Reader's Digest condensed version" for a change.

Biegel, 36, has been playing 'Rhapsody' since he was 10.

"Can you imagine what it's like for conductors and musicians who have played this piece their whole lives?" he said.

Difficult, apparently.

The orchestra stopped several times in its rehearsal, readjusting to the new, complicated flourishes.

The new version, which restores portions deleted by commercial publisher Harms Inc., is rich with jazzy blues interpolations.

Next year marks the 100th anniversary of Gershwin's birth, and many of his works are being restored from his original manuscripts and those of the conductors with whom he performed. He died in 1937.

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