George Gershwin, the boy from Brooklyn, managed the divide between popular and serious music better than anyone else; writing his first hit song ‘Swanee’ in 1919 and ‘An American in Paris’ in 1928, at the age of 30.

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.