The Piano Music of Fryderyk Chopin – from the Studio of Arthur Greene
Posted in Chopin, Recordings, Svetlana Smolina, Waltzes, classical, piano on Mar 4th, 2010
Acclaimed Chopin Project pianist Svetlana Smolina will play Chopin’s Twenty-four Preludes, Op. 28 as part of her performance tomorrow at 4:30PM (Friday, March 5th) at the Winter…
Posted in Chopin, Musicology, Nocturnes, classical, piano on Jun 2nd, 2009
“Today’s entry takes us into far more familiar Chopin territory. The Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9 No. 2 comes from around 1830, -after Chopin had left Warsaw forever. But…
Posted in Chopin, Jei-Yern Ryu, Waltzes, piano on May 10th, 2008
Chopinmusic.net calls this Grand Valse “one of Chopin’s most popular and glittering works.” We’re hard pressed to disagree.
Hear Chopin Project pianist Jei-Yern Ryu perform Chopin’s effervescent Waltz in E-flat, Op. 18.
Posted in Polina Khatsko, Recordings, Waltzes, piano on Feb 28th, 2008
Chopin’s third waltz has been called a “piece full of melancholy, gloom and grief, expressed in mournful simplicity.”
Though, according to the Vancouver Chopin Society,
The composer Stephen Heller related that Chopin called this slow (Lento) waltz his favorite. When Heller…
Posted in Impromptus, Olga Kleiankina, Recordings, classical, piano on Feb 23rd, 2008
Today the Chopin Project spotlight falls on Russian-born Michigan pianist Olga Kleiankina, performing the First Impromptu (in A-flat, Op. 29, No. 1) by Chopin. By its very title “Impromptu” is supposed to mean just that — just a perky, playful little…
Posted in Chopin, Etudes, Musicology, Recordings, classical, piano on Jan 29th, 2008
The world of music had never before known any etudes as original, as musical, or as difficult. — Frank Cooper
This is one of the best-known (and arguably, the most difficult!) of the set of twelve etudes Chopin dedicated to Franz Liszt. The…
Why are Chopin’s Waltzes so perennially appealing to pianists? The folks at the boutique label Brana Records offer a clue: nicely: “They incorporate a range of moods from melancholy to effervescent but retain an air of sophistication suited to aristocratic…
Posted in Ballades, Chopin, Musicology, classical, piano on Dec 19th, 2007
In the previous post we discussed an all-time Chopin favorite, the Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9, No. 2. What then, is left to say about another Chopin classic – this Ballade in G minor?Plenty, it would appear. There’s an extremely technical description…
Posted in Chopin, Recordings, piano, rare & early works on Dec 18th, 2007
“In Warsaw, when Chopin was growing up, the social scene was extremely active, and anyone who wasn’t sick would go to dance parties almost every night. And the star of these events was usually Chopin, because he was both a…
Posted in Barcarolles, Chopin, Recordings, classical, piano on Dec 12th, 2007
This is one of the last pieces that Chopin played in public. The excellent notes from the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s website set the stage:
When in 1846 Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) completed the Barcarolle, the last work of its relatively large size to…
Posted in Chopin, Polonaises, Recordings, piano on Dec 12th, 2007
“The very first piece on the program is a piece that Chopin wrote when he was seven years old. It’s very typical of the music that was being written at that time in Warsaw…a little Polonaise…with even a little virtuosic…
Posted in Chopin, Recordings, classical, piano on Nov 24th, 2007
Experience the musical life of Fryderyk Chopin through his complete works for solo piano: from his earliest surviving work, a polonaise written at age 7, through his last mazurka penned in 1849.
Posted in Chopin, Musicology, Recordings, classical, piano on Nov 23rd, 2007
The Chopin Project began as an ambitious live-concert-and-symposium series at the University of Michigan’s acclaimed School of Music, Theatre & Dance devoted to exploring the entirety of Fryderyk Chopin’s works for solo piano: Through a series of nine concerts at Britton Recital…
Chopin Currents Chopin 2010: Chopin in the News
