Chopin News, Views, and Reviews:

Maurizio Pollini: when inspiration flows through to the third encore
Telegraph.co.uk – United Kingdom

London critic finds the essence of the Italian artist’s mastery in a brief Chopin etude:

When everything clicks in a Maurizio Pollini recital, as it did here, it can be an absorbing, revelatory experience. This was a vintage example of his fascinating pianism, combining as it does a focused intellect with poetic sensibility, and a passion tempered by reason.

You do not expect, nor do you get, anything gratuitously extrovert with Pollini, and there was no more acute example of his essential poise and stylistic awareness than in his second encore, Chopin’s famous Revolutionary Study.

Where some might launch headlong into it with barnstorming bravura, Pollini was more circumspect, not to the detriment of the music’s drama but with a care for colour that went way beyond mere technical virtuosity. [...]

Thoroughly in his element, Pollini played Chopin’s Four Mazurkas Op 33 with a breathtaking mix of wistful melancholy and rhythmic impetus. In the B minor Scherzo, as in the G minor Ballade given as the third encore, his inspiration flowed seamlessly.

Pollini’s rare artistry is restricted
This is London – London,England,UK

Same recital, entirely different view from the Evening Standard critic….

Undoubtedly one of the pianistic giants of his generation, Maurizio Pollini offers an increasingly frustrating experience in recital. Now in his mid-60s, he can still pack them in to the Festival Hall and bring them to their feet after three rousing encores. But a disengaged quality in his playing mars too much of what he does.

[...]

It has to be said, though, that Pollini’s technical mastery is no longer unassailable. That insecurity may well account for the scrambled, vertiginous nature of virtuoso passages, such as those of Chopin’s Scherzo No 1 in B minor. There was some impressive playing here, too: Pollini’s tone is always ingratiating and there were many wonderfully nuanced moments.

But once again expansive gestures were shunned, with the result that too much was flattened out and under-characterised

See all stories on this topic

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Chopin is the Only Ring Tone for You
By Evan

I have a custom ring tone setup on my cell phone when my bride Amanda calls. Yesterday at work I thought I heard her calling … but it was just the internet radio?! How could she call me through the internet radio?
My guess is that my cell phone’s built in melody #7 is actually a version of Chopin’s Étude No. 5 in G-Flat Major “Black Keys.”

Wild.er – http://blog.evanwilder.com

Chopin in the YouTubeoSphere:

YouTube – Yundi Li – Chopin “Fantasie” Impromptu, Op. 66

Professionally shot and released DG video of the Fantasie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66 No. 1…

Chopin Video of the Day: Neil Sedaka Plays Chopin, c. 1965

The crooner shows off his classical chops by playing the Fantaisie-Impromptu after stumping the panel on the game show I’ve Got A Secret…

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Romanian pianist gives strong premiere of challenging Kernis work
Minneapolis Star Tribune – Minneapolis,MN,USA

Nicely-written review of Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa’s Twin Cities recital…

The piano recital was hatched in the romantic era; the society that suckled it is long dead. Yet the institution still stirs, as evidenced by Mihaela Ursuleasa’s sterling recital Sunday at Macalester College — the culmination of the Frederic Chopin Society’s 25th-anniversary season.

The center of interest was the world premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis‘ “Ballad(e) Out of the Blues: Superstar Étude No. 3,” commissioned for the occasion. Invoking Gershwin in its opening moments, the piece, which honors the memory of Kernis’ late father, is one of his characteristically complex negotiations with the musical past — a continuously absorbing “battle with history,” as the composer put it in a pre-concert talk…

In Ursuleasa’s Chopin group, preceding intermission, the two scherzos were more sharply characterized than the two ballades (which nonetheless resonated intriguingly with Kernis). The haunted euphoria of the B-flat minor Scherzo, in particular, was conveyed with startling intensity, although here and elsewhere a bit more rhythmic freedom would not have gone amiss.

See all stories on this topic

Review: Rafal Blechacz, Vancouver Chopin Society
Vancouver Sun – British Columbia, Canada

“A big jump into prominence for the Vancouver Chopin Society,” says the Canadian scribe, , adding “We were lucky to have heard this concert. Chopin needs him.”

From the wings of the Chan came the remarkable winner of the 2005 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the 23-year-old Rafal Blechacz, who placed first in all five categories and was so superior to the other contestants that the judges decided not to award a second place, which is really saying something. This was Blechacz’s only Canadian stop on a current five-city first tour of North America.

A Pole, he seems to have found a way of restoring simplicity and emotional clarity to a birthright composer who is too often tortured out of recognition and made to seem more complicated than he really is, though the difficulties of playing him are often fearsome.

Blechacz found a way of making him sound natural in a way that reminded me of Christopher Columbus’s solution to making an egg stand on end: he just chipped it slightly. That doesn’t mean Blechacz cheated on the music in any way; he just made it look easy.

He started with a first half that was made up of Mozart, Debussy and Szymanowski. The other half was what the audience came to hear and is typical of these concerts in the series: Chopin.

[...]

The whole second half was given to the 24 preludes by Chopin. These small miracles, the shortest of them only about half a minute long, were described as “eagle’s feathers” by Schumann and one can’t speak too highly of them. Every one of them held you rapt under Blechacz’s spell. The 16th, which is already perilous for the right hand, was taken at an extreme speed and not a note was lost. The bass tones of the fourth rang out, dense with pure piano tone and in beautiful balance. The 14th was very, very dark and the shockingly dissonant second tolled its despair.

He made the whole set seem like a stroll through an art gallery, aphorisms that ranged from “a gleam of pure Chopin sunshine,” as a writer characterized one of them, to the darkest morbidity, and this modest young man, who looked surprised by the standing ovation and long cheers, played the whole program from memory.

He’s already booked four years in advance. We were lucky to have heard this concert. Chopin needs him.

See all stories on this topic

From Georgia with love
Jerusalem Post – Israel

Georgian Pianist Alexander Korsantia prepares to play a concert with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, whose home venue of Henry Crown Hall just happens to be located on 5 Chopin Street…

I perceive Israel as my country,” says pianist Alexander Korsantia, who will perform Chopin’s Second Concerto together with the Jerusalem Symphony under Leon Botstein in a special concert celebrating Israel’s 60th Independence day and 70 years since the orchestra’s founding. “13 years ago Israel embraced me. Since then our relationship only strengthens and I try never to let down the local audience,” the pianist adds. Korsantia’s career received a significant international push after he won first prize at the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in 1995.

See all stories on this topic

High praise for Chekhov at Hycroft
Vancouver Courier – BC, Canada

A rare Vancouver twin-bill of one-act plays by the Russian playwright reveals a heretofore hidden Chopin talent:

After the show, back home, I went scurrying to my Chopin CDs–Chopin because not only did actor Olesia Shewchuk completely steal my heart with her Natalia Stepanovna (in The Proposal) and Elena Ivanovna Popova (in The Bear), but she plays Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu on the Hycroft grand piano as part of the show. Multi-talented, she also translated “The Bear” from Russian.

See all stories on this topic

GILMORE FESTIVAL HIGH NOTES
Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com – Kalamazoo,MI,USA

From the behind-the-scenes blog at the Gilmore Festival in Kalamazoo, MI:

Rafal Blechacz CD wins rave

Rafal Blechacz, who performed Sunday at Western Michigan University’s Dalton Center Recital Hall, is getting great press on his new CD, “Chopin: The Complete Preludes” (Deutsche Grammophon).

“Rafal Blechacz looks on his CD cover like he can’t be older than 14 (he’s 22),” wrote Arizona Republic music critic Richard Nilsen in an April 6 review. “But his new recording of Chopin’s Preludes — and a couple of Nocturnes to fill out the disc — has to be one of the best debut albums since Glenn Gould’s Goldbergs. It’s that good.

“New young pianists pop out of the woodwork almost daily. Some have a great PR campaign behind them; others burst briefly from the many piano competitions before disappearing in the grind of concert tours with every second-rate orchestra in the world. Blechacz is different: He actually has something to say, and a personality that infuses his playing. … This is truly refreshing pianism.”

– James Sanford,

Kalamazoo Gazette

See all stories on this topic

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

15 Questions to Freddy Kempf Can you tell who Freddy Kempf is by …
By pianoplayer0123(pianoplayer0123)

From the “Solo Pianist” blogsite, an online Q & A with classical music’s “Man in Black”…

I am at home, in London, – in my wife’s “office” as we have a good friend of ours staying in my room! I am feeling heart-broken and depressed because I have just spent the whole afternoon practising Chopin’s 2nd piano concerto – it is such a wonderful feeling! I also feel great as I went to the gym today and ran my usual 3km in record time – 9 mins. in fact… well just kidding but one day I’ll get it down to 9 minutes… Some day…

What’s on your schedule right now?
On my schedule? Well tomorrow I fly to Sweden to do Chopin 2nd with a really great conductor friend of mine. I’m really looking forward to it as we always seem to make such good music together as well as having such fun. He sent me an SMS today saying, “Hi Freddy. When you arrive? Dinner? Weather is rubbish orchestra is great.”

Solo Pianist – http://lyudmilachudinova.blogspot.com/

ISO hands pianist Chen the keys to Chopin piece
Springfield State Journal Register – Springfield,IL,USA

Preview of Illinois Symphony Orchestra performance featuring Chinese pianist (and “Crystal Award” winner (3rd prize) at the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition) Sa Chen:

With the ISO, she will perform Frederic Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. Chen sees what’s often called a light orchestral accompaniment as a dialogue between soloist and ensemble.

“It’s sentimental, dramatic and operatic, and it’s, in many ways, like a conversation with a lot of musically folksy elements,” Chen says of the Polish composer’s work.

See all stories on this topic

Warsaw city Chopin piano stunt
Thenews.pl – Warsaw,Poland

Could this be a late-breaking April 1 story?

The PR department at Warsaw city council is thinking of throwing pianos out of windows as a public relations exercise to publicise the capital.

During the anti-Tsarist Uprising of 1863, Chopin’s piano was thrown out of the window of his sister’s apartment by the soldiers of the Tsar and smashed on the street below.

The PR Department in the Warsaw City council has come up with an idea of drawing on that historical episode in the promotion of Warsaw to tourists.

Vienna has its Mozart, London has its Sherlock Holmes, why not throw replicas of grand pianos out of the window as a promotion gimmick, Warsaw PR people say….

See all stories on this topic

Celebrated pianist Lifschitz draws inspiration from natural forces
San Jose Mercury News – CA, USA

Preview and profile of pianist Konstantin Lifshitz, as a prelude to his April 10 performances and masterclasses in San Jose…

He’s including the 12 Études of Chopin’s Opus 25 in preparation for a week of master classes at Aix-en-Provence, and concludes the recital with Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. In between he’s slipping in Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, the composer’s early, bracing venture into atonality. While he commits most of the music he performs to memory, he’ll have the Schoenberg sheet music on hand. Lifschitz may be a genius, but he’s not foolhardy.

See all stories on this topic

Pianist prepares for weekend of favorites with PSO
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review – Pittsburgh,PA,USA

Emanuel Ax comes to Steel City to play and share some thoughts about his “musical first love:”

Ax recalls that he began playing Chopin when he was 7 or 8. “I’m Polish by birth. All Polish pianists play Chopin, quite apart from him being a large part of every pianist’s life, really.

“I certainly love Chopin as much as any composer. He was probably my first love in the sense that I also grew up with (Arthur) Rubinstein, who was known to me as ‘the Chopin pianist.’ He played a lot else marvelously, too.”

Ax’s family moved to Canada in 1959 and settled in New York City in 1961. After studying at the Juilliard School of Music and Columbia University, he began winning piano competitions. But his career really took off after winning first prize in the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in 1974.

“After I won, he was very kindly. When he came to New York several times a year, he always found a little time for me. We had a few lessons, among them the Chopin F minor Concerto. He had a lot of stuff to say, unbelievably exact and instructive. I got to have dinner with him a few times, too. I was moving in high circles,” says the modest pianist.

Chopin and Debussy “are the most astonishingly original composers I know, Ax says. “With Beethoven, you see it’s incredible music, but you can trace connections to Mozart and Haydn writing at the time. Chopin comes from Warsaw and explodes on the scene. It’s a pretty revolutionary way of hearing music.”

See all stories on this topic

‘Forever’ Celebrates Life
OhmyNews International – South Korea

Glowing review of director Heddy Honigmann’s documentary “Forever”

Shot at the world famous Pere-Lachaise cemetery, the largest in Paris, the film explores the thoughts and feelings of those who have come to the gravesites to pay tribute to famous people such as Chopin, Modigliani, Apollonaire, Balzac, Proust and Oscar Wilde as well as ordinary folk who lived and loved and have been remembered. It is a moving experience that engages both the mind and the heart.

The film opens with the story of pianist Yoshino Kimura, a young Asian woman who performs the work of Frederic Chopin as a means of connecting with her deceased father who loved his music. Scenes of Kimura playing the pensive melodies of Chopin’s Nocturnes in concert are shown as the camera offers loving close ups of the pianist, the emotion revealed in her eyes.

See all stories on this topic

Prestigious Gilmore Music Festival brings pianist to Albion
Battle Creek Enquirer – Battle Creek,MI,USA

Preview of April 26th concert featuring Gilmore Young Artist (and multiple Chopin award-winner) Naomi Kudo:

Although she’s only 20 years old, the Asian-American Kudo is a veteran of numerous international competitions. During the past three years alone, Kudo is the 2007 winner of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, too second prize at the 2005 U.S. National Chopin and was the only American finalist at the 2005 Chopin Piano Competition in Poland. She has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Fukui Symphony Orchestra and numerous other U.S. ensembles.

See all stories on this topic

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

SPOTLIGHT: Marjorie Vincent, “Fantasie-Impromptu” by Frédéric …

By Ike(Ike)

From the “Fly Funky Diva” blog, memories of a Miss America with some major Chopin mojo….

Marjorie’s piano rendition of this Chopin masterpiece went down as one of the most brilliant talent performances in Miss America history. She also looked incredible! Marjorie Vincent was crowned Miss America this year making her the fourth african-american woman to hold the title.

Fly Funky Diva – http://flyfunkydiva.blogspot.com/

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

At 90, ‘Piano Jazz’ personality going strong
Roanoke Times – Roanoke,VA,USA

Ageless pianist, author, and radio host Marian McPartland celebrates her 90th birthday, in grand style at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. She looks back on a career that began with Chopin:

From the very beginning of her musical life, McPartland has been easily able to absorb music. She learned to play piano mostly from listening to her mother play Chopin at home and seeking out the melodies and chords on her own. She received formal training at Guildhall School of Music in her native Great Britain when still in her teens, but the lure of jazz proved too strong to resist a gig playing in a four-piano vaudeville act. “My parents were horrified,” she remembers. “But I was in show business now and that was that.”

See all stories on this topic

Asada gets up to grab gold
Yahoo! Eurosport – London,UK

Tabith and Agosto falter, but Chopin serves Japan’s Mao Asada well at the World Figure Skating Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden….

Asada slipped as she prepared for what was supposed to the first jump in her routine to Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu, sliding into the boards instead of …

See all stories on this topic

Misc. Chopiniana:

Three Deilmann Ships Sail the Elbe River this Summer
About – News & Issues – New York,NY,USA

Did you know there was a Chopin Cruise Liner? Now you do…

The MV Katharina von Bora and MV Frederic Chopin will cruise between Berlin and Prague, and the MV Dresden will sail between Hamburg and Dresden. …

See all stories on this topic

Kurikinton Fox – F.Chopin – fantasy impromptu in Guitar!!!

Not bad at all!

This is Fantasy Impromptu AKA Gino’s piece. These guys did this in g-tar…Amazing:D.
music is everything, everything is music – http://fluteguitar.multiply.com/

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Concert pianist favourite returns
Huddersfield Examiner – Huddersfield,UK

Local favorita Evgenia Rubinova returns to play the Chopin First Concerto at the Huddersfield Town Hall…

In an evening full of festivity and celebration, she will be playing works by Shostakovich, Chopin and Prokofiev. Shostakovich’s Festival Overture premiered …
See all stories on this topic

A Classic Contrast (Or So It Seems)
Washington Post – United States

Washington Post critic Anne Midgette weighs the consecutive recital appearances by Yundi Li and Lang Lang, and decide maybe they’re not so different after all…

Tuesday’s concert at the Kennedy Center bore out the idea (formed at several concerts over the past few years) that Lang Lang, after the stunning promise of his 2001 Carnegie Hall debut, has become one of the most maddening pianists on Earth. He can make any musical passage crass, coarse and bombastic. He can also create moments of breathtaking beauty. And a listener never knows which is coming next…..The Bartok sonata, played from sheet music with a spasmodic hysteria that produced the aural equivalent of dry heaves in places, and Chopin’s A-flat Polonaise, of which he made an unequivocal hash, shredding the whole line of the piece in tantrums of pedal and fingerwork.

At Strathmore the following night, Yundi Li appeared a contrast indeed: well-bred, elegant, demure, the epitome of good taste, so sober as to be a little boring until he unleashed some virtuoso fireworks of his own. He opened with a supremely classical take on Mozart’s K.330, crisp and light, and continued with a selection of his calling-card composer, Chopin, playing the Op. 33 mazurkas, the nocturne Op. 9, No. 2, and the showy Op. 22 “Grande Polonaise Brillante,” with a detour into the Liszt/Schumann “Widmung” to underscore the lyrical singing lines of his playing. There is nothing effete about his Chopin; it is sensitive but strong.

…..

if both are expressing the same thing, Yundi Li is expressing it less colorfully. His program was the more conventional, the one we are supposed to like.But thinking it over afterward, I found I had, as a listener, been more engaged by my annoyance at Lang Lang than my distant approval of Yundi Li.

See all stories on this topic

Another Chopin Video

Cecile Licad Playing Chopin Ballade G-Moll Op.23
Philippines’ Finest Cecile Licad playing Chopin (pronounced as Sho-pan) Ballade G-moll Op.
Everyone Has a Dark Side… I… – http://alexskywalker.multiply.com/

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Celebrities play chess
By Nikita

Look at the company Fryderyk is keeping at the Chessboard..

Artists and musicians: Bono (U2), Madonna, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Guy Ritchie, Frank Sinatra, Salvador Dali, Ludwig van Beethoven, David Bowie, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Sting, Enrico Caruso, Ray Charles, Cher, Frederic Chopin, …
Chessalee – http://chessaleeinlondon.wordpress.com

♯Five
By Frederic Francois Chopin(Frederic Francois Chopin)

Another installment from the pianopoet…(must be 14 to enter site…)

Am I truly happy with what I did? Thinking back on it now, I’m not so sure I am. I understand what all of us went through, the trials and tribulations we surpassed to get where we were. Then for everything to finally reach the end…the …
The piano is his way of life – http://pianopoet.livejournal.com/

Pianist Lim Dong-hyek Emerges From Slump With Bach

Hearing Bach’s Goldberg Variations used in a computer game prompts 23-year old Korean star (studying at Juilliard) to break out of artistic doldrums. Known as an interpreter of Chopin, Lim interpreter calls new repertoire “stealing a glance of Bach.”

Korea Times – South Korea
In 2005 he shared third place with his older brother Dong-min at the International Chopin event, where there was no second prizewinner. …
See all stories on this topic

Simon Trpceski touches the soul

Telegraph critic goes to Dorset for run-up to Wigmore Hall appearance by Simon Trpceski, and likes what he hears: “Trpceski’s piano-playing is something to be savoured, and on occasion it is a treat just to ponder privately rather than attempting to convey thoughts through prose.”

Telegraph.co.uk – United Kingdom

Buttressed by two classic sonatas – Chopin’s Second in B flat minor and Prokofiev’s Seventh – the programme touched on the Debussy that Trpceski has so …
See all stories on this topic

PANUFNIK: Old Polish Suite; Concerto in Modo Antico; Jagiellonian …

Tepid review of new CD: It was a desire to restore some of the olden Polish music that led to the creation of the works on this disc. He took many different modes of inspiration from old houses, religious artifacts, and even music from composers of Poland’s rich past, including Chopin. This is an interesting idea for a concept album, but I must be honest in reporting that the music on this release leaves little lasting impression.
PANUFNIK: Old Polish Suite; Concerto in Modo Antico; Jagiellonian Triptych; Old Polish Music – Divertimento after Janiewicz; Hommage a Chopin – Igor Cechoco, trumptet/ Hanna Turonek, flute/ Polish Changer Orchestra/ Mariusz Smolij …
Audiophile Audition Headlines – http://www.audaud.com

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Frédéric Chopin

From a Blog called “Tales from the Graveside” – a picture of…well, you get the picture.

By Hermes(Hermes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin http://www.chopinmusic.net/en/home/
Tales from the Graveside – http://talesfromthegraveside.blogspot.com/

Chopin Videos:

Hee Ah Lee – Frédéric Chopin – Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66

Chopin on nine fingers… By xujiren(xujiren)
A moving story of a four-fingered pianist -
Inspirations from the Net – http://netinspirations.blogspot.com/