Porgy, Preludes & Paris: Gershwin Arrangements for Piano Duo Piano à Deux

• Linda Ang Stoodley, Robert Stoodley:
• 1 Scenes from "Porgy & Bess" (After Gershwin) 18:58
• Diversions (After Gershwin):
• 2 Diversions (After Gershwin): No 1, Novelette in Fourths - Love Walked In 05:23
• 3 Diversions (After Gershwin): No. 2, Rialto Ripples - Love Is Here to Stay 04:30
• A Suite of Preludes (After Gershwin):
• 4 A Suite of Preludes (After Gershwin): I. Prelude No. 1 - Stairway to Paradise 04:02
• 5 A Suite of Preludes (After Gershwin): II. Prelude No. 2 - A Foggy Day in London Town 08:02
• 6 A Suite of Preludes (After Gershwin): III. Prelude No. 3 - Someone to Watch Over Me - The Man I Love 07:50
• Linda Ang Stoodley, Robert Stoodley:
• 7 An American in Paris Revisited (After Gershwin) 15:06
• Total Runtime 01:03:51

Info for Porgy, Preludes & Paris: Gershwin Arrangements for Piano Duo

Husband and wife team Robert and Linda Stoodley are an adventurous duo with a very wide range of repertoire from the pops to major classical works which they present to appreciative audiences all around the world, spending much time as recitalists on cruise ships. They are also accomplished arrangers, as demonstrated by the brilliant transcriptions on their recordings. Following their well received Divine Art debut album ‘France Revisited’ they present superb new arrangements of George Gershwin works from the serious (Porgy & Bess) to tin pan alley songs, often interwined and merged. Purists may frown but such arrangements, sampling and “medleying” were well known to Gershwin himself.

Taking their lead from the 1951 film of ‘An American in Paris’, Piano à Deux – Robert and Linda Ang Stoodley – have created their own collage of excerpts from Gershwin’s ‘rhapsodic ballet’, incorporating songs featured in the film, including the ever popular ‘I Got Rhythm’ and the lesser known ‘By Strauss’. The new album, “From Brooklyn to Broadway”, will be released by next spring and is to be recorded in August at St. Peter and Paul Church, Church Hanborough (Steinway model D).

Gershwin’s sketchbooks of 1924 and 1925 show he planned to write solo piano pieces but his efforts left little more than a handful of compositions: the Three Preludes (1926), arrangements of eighteen of his songs and a number of miniatures.

In their new recording, Piano À Deux has coupled some of Gershwin’s solo piano works with his songs in new transcriptions for piano four hands. The Three Preludes each become extended pieces with ‘A Foggy Day in London Town’ seamlessly blending into ‘Prelude No. 2’. The charming, early miniature, ‘Novelette in Fourths’ is combined with ‘Love Walked Right In’, and ‘Our Love is Here to Stay’ is embedded in ‘Rialto Ripples’.

An entertaining new rhapsody by Piano à Deux for piano four hands derived from Gershwin’s opera ‘Porgy and Bess’, forms the recording’s finale.

Piano à Deux’s first album, ‘France Revisited’ (2017) attracted much praise for both the performances and also Linda’s inspired arrangements of Poulenc songs.

Linda Stoodley, piano
Robert Stoodley, piano

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