PORGY, PRELUDES and PARIS

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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Robert and Linda Ang Stoodley play together by the French nickname of Piano à Deux. She is Singapore-born, Robert is as English as you can get, and together since they met on line and then married just a few years ago they make beautiful all-American music in this all-Gershwin CD, with several albums already in stock and more to come. Their website: http://www.pianoadeux.com

Their latest CD (dda25183) for Divine Art Recordings Group is cause for celebration. Terrific playing, of course, paired to smart program notes by Iain Sneddon, impeccable engineering by Oli Whitworth, Stephen Sutton’s album design.

The sheer delight that PORGY, PRELUDES & PARIS produces after not one but many hearings comes from a very idiomatic, very American, very cool, very laid-back, very down-to-earth, very unpretentious, very…Gershwin way of playing Gershwin.

There’s no grandstanding on the part of the Stoodleys when the big finishes loom around the corner, there’s no pretentiousness, nor is there any preciousness in their playing of the tunes of that most American of all American composers. They play with sheer joy and unabashed exuberance. When they need ersatz Viennese Schmaltz for By Strauss they can lay it on, and when the sweeping melodies of Porgy and Bess call for operatic opulence the Stoodley’s deliver in spades.

Gershwin had one foot planted on the Great White Way and the other on the big building at the corner of 57th and 7th in NYC. His music making evidenced this happy dichotomy made whole by his genius and the wisdom of Ravel who told the American fellow with big ideas to go back home with whatever he had learned and be himself. Which, in a way is what he did and what it is needed to play his music.

You cannot swing nor play stride piano unless you can counterbalance precision and meticulousness with an utterly relaxed approach to the keyboard. The Stoodleys have it all and Divine Art has a winning ticket with these two artists.

More please!

Rafael de Acha http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”