Piano duettists are a relatively rare breed in the professional music fraternity and we were lucky to get the 'Abbott O'Gorman Duo' to perform for the 18th July lunchtime concert. Much acclaimed in this restrictive field, they proved to be a most dynamic pair of musicians playing with tremendous energy and pizzazz and succeeding in thrilling the audience with renderings of well loved favourites from the 'classics' and lighter music.

Brahms' " Hungarian Dance No.5" commencing the programme was played with enormous drive and panache and preceded a delightful selection from Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" with one artiste being the raconteur between scenes.

A change to Bernstein's "West Side Story" produced some mind-boggling pianistic abilities and the programme then continued with the famous "Mother Goose Suite" of Ravel, finally concluding with a virtuoso performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue".

Truly a concert to cherish, this occasion was marked by outstanding musicianship and presentation by these two ladies who since teaming up in 1992 have rightly gone from strength to strength and received many world-wide accolades in their chosen field.

P.B.

The Abbott O'Gorman Piano Duo

Jocelyn Abbott and Laura O’Gorman are acclaimed champions of “à quatre mains” playing, commissioning transcriptions and themselves adapting arrangements of the orchestral repertoire.

Before the radio or gramophone, the great composers transcribed their ballets and large orchestral works for the full gamut of colour and percussive effects of the piano and twenty fingers.

The Abbott O'Gorman Piano Duo formed in 1992.

Both pianists are Steinway Artists and honorary associates of the Royal Academy of Music. They perform concerts world-wide, are regular radio broadcasters and their CD recordings have been met with great critical acclaim.