The double bill pays homage to George Balanchine, one of the most influential 20th-century choreographers, considered the founder of neoclassical ballet. The production features his Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet and Who Cares?, both created for the New York City Ballet.

Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966) is Balanchine’s very first abstract work. The choreographer used to say that chamber music was not suitable for large-scale ballets, since chamber pieces are usually “too long, with too many repeats, and are meant for small rooms”. Back in the 1930s, Arnold Schoenberg orchestrated Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, voicing similar dissatisfaction. In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle music critic Alfred Frankenstein, he explained the reasons for having done so: “1. I like the piece. 2. It is seldom played. 3. It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved.” Balanchine opted for Schoenberg’s version. His Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet is a dynamic one-act ballet for 55 dancers in four parts (in line with the four movements of Brahms’s quartet), each possessing a particular mood, style and charge.

Choreographed to George Gershwin’s music, the 40-minute neoclassical ballet Who Cares? is one of George Balanchine’s most joyous works. Its title is identical with that of one of the featured songs, written by George and Ira Gershwin for their 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing. “The best of Gershwin songs maintain their classic freshness, like an eternal martini – dry, frank, refreshing, tailor-made, with an invisible kick from its slightest hint of citron,” wrote Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet. Robert Sealy of Ballet Review said: “This fast-stepping, cheeky ballet evokes the lively spirit of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and the 1930s, and portrays an exuberance that is broadly American and charged with a distinctive energy. Who Cares? is wonderful. Never in a theatre have I wanted so much to jump the moat and join in. It is pure, unmitigated, uncut joy.” 

Balanchine also created quite a few choreographies for Broadway that left a clear stamp on his work for the New York City Ballet. In Who Cares?, set to 16 songs by George Gershwin, he evokes the chic glamour, light-hearted humour and effervescent joie de vivre of old Broadway.

Who Cares? is a ballet made by New York City Ballet's co-founder and founding choreographer George Balanchine to songs by George Gershwin in an orchestration by Hershy Kay. The premiere took place on Saturday, February 7, 1970, at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center with costumes by Barbara Karinska and lighting by Ronald Bates; it was at first performed without décor but from November 1970 with scenery by Jo Mielziner.

The conductor was Robert Irving and the pianist on opening night Gordon Boelzner; the orchestration had only been completed for two songs, "Strike Up the Band" and "I Got Rhythm". "Clap Yo' Hands" was performed to a recording made by George Gershwin; this sequence was, however, eliminated by Balanchine in 1976; new costumes were commissioned from Ben Benson by Balanchine before his death and have been used since 1983.

Balanchine and Gershwin's plans to collaborate were frustrated by the composer's untimely death in 1937. Thirty-three years later, Balanchine chose seventeen of Gershwin's from Broadway musical songs for this ballet; Mayor John V. Lindsay presented Balanchine with the Handel Medallion, New York City's highest cultural award, on opening night.