Carmichael, H: Star Dust

In 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald, the American author whose most celebrated novel is The Great Gatsby, published a collection of short stories under the title Tales of the Jazz Age. The Great War was over and, despite political turmoil, brutal racial repression and Prohibition – the “Noble Experiment” that theoretically banned alcohol throughout the United States from 1920 until 1933, Americans managed to throw caution to the winds and enjoy themselves until the Great Depression struck in 1929. “The jazz age” is now taken to refer to this “anything goes” period, during which jazz flourished and many new popular dance crazes popped up and were frequently displaced equally suddenly. The Charleston and the Fox Trot have endured, but others included such animal inspirations as the Kangaroo Hop, Grizzly Bear, Bunny Hug and Horse Trot.

This disc contains a number of “first recordings” which will no doubt fascinate and entertain the listener and are sure to attract critical interest.

With CDs approaching forty in number and a busy concert schedule stretching back more than a quarter of a century, the British piano duo Goldstone and Clemmow is firmly established as a leading force. Described by Gramophone as ‘a dazzling husband and wife team’, by International Record Review as ‘a British institution in the best sense of the word’, and by The Herald, Glasgow, as ‘the UK’s pre-eminent two-piano team’, internationally known artists Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow formed their duo in 1984 and married in 1989. Their extremely diverse activities in two-piano and piano-duet recitals and double concertos, taking in major festivals, have sent them all over the British Isles as well as to Europe, the Middle East and several times to the U.S.A., where they have received standing ovations and such press accolades as ‘revelations such as this are rare in the concert hall these days’ (Charleston Post and Courier). In their refreshingly presented concerts they mix famous masterpieces and fascinating rarities, which they frequently unearth themselves, into absorbing and hugely entertaining programmes; their numerous B.B.C. broadcasts have often included first hearings of unjustly neglected works,and their equally enterprising and acclaimed commercial recordings include many world premières.