Well, last night was a real delight! Simon Tedeschi regaled a large audience & me at the Lane Cove Music club with his carefully collated recital Gershwin & Me. Phew! – what awesome talent. What consummate musicianship! From the first ripple over the keys to the final reverberation I sat spellbound by his technique, his fingers freeing a rapport of rich jazz harmonies and familiar melodic skips in a dazzling assortment of colours from a very streetwise-looking grand.
Highlights would have to include Percy Grainger’s arrangement of “Love Walked In” and a gob-smacking rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” A perfect interpretation of Debussy’s “Clare de Lune” briefly filled the room with the whimsical dissonance of the French impressionist and he gave a lively piece by Fats Waller a sound tuning.
A gracious japester with a big smile, he capped the night’s piano fun with an encore: Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” in a boogie-woogie style. I’m still smiling! Another favourite of mine was his opening sortie, “Rialto Ripples Rag,” but I’ve always been a sucker for ragtime.