I am listening now.
Among contemporary composers, Igor Stravinsky thought it was brilliant, while Sergei Prokofiev found it amateurish. Prokofiev had something bad to say about everybody and everything, so that wasn’t a surprise.
This is not a surprise! LOL! Of the two, I prefer the music of Prokofiev, but I can absolutely hear in the music of Gershwin things that would appeal to Stravinsky.
In my humble opinion, based not on scholarship, but just what my ears tell me, Prokofiev seems more rooted in the late 19th century and dips his toes into the Twentieth, while Stravinsky is the opposite. To the very traditional Classically trained musician, the rhythms and close harmonies (even clashing!) in Jazz can seem "primitive". Then again, those same people who critique Gershwin in this manner are usually the ones who would say the same thing about Prokofiev!
Prokofiev, being Edgy!
Actually, it's titled "The Montagues and the Capulets" on my CD. It was used in several TV commercials in the Seventies and Eighties. The British TV series "The Commanders" used it as a theme in the Sixties. The first time that I heard it was "The Commanders," and I said, "I don't know the title, but that's Prokofiev. Nobody else writes like that."
Stravinsky even took a shot at ragtime. Jazz didn't scare him, and he enjoyed being the bad boy of classical music.