Piano: Steinway
(ADD) Recorded in 1947, 1949, 1951, 1954.
Remastered using 24-Bit State-of-the-Art Technology � HDCD Encoded

All Two Piano Arrangements by Livingston Gearhart except Arensky, Brahms and Tailleferre.

From 1940 until 1954, the husband and wife two-piano duo of Virginia Morley and Livingston Gearhart made headlines crisscrossing the U.S. and Canada twenty-six times performing annual concert tours. Always accompanied by their two nine-foot Steinways in a separate custom van, they performed for enthusiastic audiences from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. Receiving rave reviews and standing ovations, audiences and critics alike were ecstatic and amazed at their musicianship. A typical review stated: "Miss Morley is beautiful. Mr. Gearhart is good-looking. Their duo-piano playing is magical. It was as if one brain were directing two pairs of hands on the same keyboard... and the applause, to coin a phrase, was thunderous. The pianists received more than a score of curtain calls."

Their unique brand of programming, combining sophisticated Livingston Gearhart arrangements of popular music with two-piano classical standards, along with new piano commissions (David Diamond, Norman Dello Joio and Darius Milhaud wrote two-piano compositions for them), made them truly unique. This 2-CD release of remastered historic recordings dating from 1947 to 1954, showcases the extraordinary two-piano artistry of Morley and Gearhart. Also included is a very informative and lavish 28-page booklet along with many rare photographs.

Disc.Reviews

This material is so engaging that the listener feels no fatigue as he experiences it straight through... When you need a little musical honey to be poured on the praline, Morley and Gearhart supply it... The sound on these recordings doesn't show its age; the remastering is excellent.

Fanfare Magazine, Mar. 2002

For those whose two-piano listening have been confined to the Labeque sisters, this album will be something of a revelation. Even for us who are well familiar with Vronsky and Babin, Whittemore and Lowe, and Gold and Fizdale, the 14-year collaboration of Morley and Gearhart (1940-1954) may well have slipped by, despite their recordings and David Diamond's having dedicated his Concerto for Two Solo Pianos to them. A favorite duo for Fred Waring, the Gearharts originally met as part of Robert Casadesus and Nadia Boulanger's master class in Paris, 1937. Virginia's maiden name, Clotfelter, found a more euphonious stage name in Morley; she became Mrs. Gearhart in 1940. At first, the duo specialized in Gallic fare, like Debussy En Blanc et Noir; but with their access to night clubs and radio, Livingston used his training in composition from Boulanger, Stravinsky and Milhaud to create enduring arrangements from classics to Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. Virginia, by the way, after the couple's separation, became Mrs. Fred Waring.

These two CD's from Ivory Classics offer 43 cuts, music from Gearhart's arrangement of "Three Blind Mice" to Poulenc's Movements perpetuels, Hoagy Carmichael's Star Dust, to Chopin's "Minute" Waltz, Youmans "Tea for Two" and Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." Consistently, the playing is exceeding suave, fleet, even glibly secure. Most of the tempos are fast, even in eight of the Brahms waltzes. The playing in Debussy's "Fetes" will bear comparison with the recording by the Lhevinne's in the 1930's. They play the Arensky Op. 15 Waltz with the same schwung as Gabrilowitsch and Levitzky, only in better sound. Many of the cuts seem to come out of Hollywood soundtracks, like the arrangements of Arlen's "Stormy Weather," Rodgers' "With a Song in My Heart," and Green's "Body and Soul." Gershwin's An American in Paris is breezy, deft, and it enjoys any number of coloristic touches, from honking taxicabs to evocations of Paris night-life. For both touch-piece accuracy and agile symmetry of motion, try their Liadov Music-Box, Op. 32 and Kodaly's "The Viennese Musical Clock" from Hary Janos. From the French salon we have Tailleferre's "La Tirelitentaine" and Lenoir's "Parlez moi d'amour," which all but evokes the voice of Piaf.

Typically, the team of Morley and Gearhart gleaned highest praise for the intelligence and polish of their playing, for what Isabel Morse Jones called their "precision and simultaneous musical thinking." These discs confirm her opinion and then some.

Audiophile Audition, Dec. 2001

Page Top