Reilly, Chopin And Strayhorn
By Rifftides

From jazz journalist Doug Ramsey’s Rifftides blog on Artsjournal.com, a fascinating performance by jazz pianist Jack Reilly…

That led to a search that turned up video of Reilly in a performance that melds Chopin and Strayhorn. His subtle key changes are central to the fun and fascination. .

Rifftides – http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/

Horowitz – Chopin
By David Berner(David Berner)

Vancouver BC talk show host/nascent politician posts video of Vladimir Horowitz playing a movment from Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 at the White House in 1986. For No. Apparent. Reason….

David Talks/The Berner Monologues – http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/

Robbins’s Definitive Chopin at the NYC Ballet
By nahnopenotquite

The Jerome Robbins Celebration for the 2008 spring season at the New York City Ballet is on now. I saw a program last night called Definitive Chopin that consisted of three pieces set to the music of, uh, Frederic Chopin (who else?).

It is hard to me to overstate how much I loved this performance. Dance is the highest expression of human physicality, the absolute apotheosis of human grace and beauty. You can see why men were always falling in love with prima ballerinas in 19th century novels. Ballet is pure elevation of the female form, so feminine, so seductive, so… The dance exults in the human body, and the dancers perform with such strength and skill that I left the theater amazed and elated. I kid you not. It was genuinely sublime.

Nah, Nope, Not Quite – http://nahnopenotquite.wordpress.com

Chopin Videos:

Prelude in C Minor, Frédéric Chopin
By Hari Ram Narayanan(Hari Ram Narayanan)

From a blog called “Chronicle of a Student Pianist…”

Frédéric Chopin referred to as “the poet of the piano”, is a polish composer. He composed almost exclusively for the piano. This piece is from his set of 24 preludes, each of which is composed in a different key. …

The Chronicles of a Student Pianist – http://thechroniclesofastudentpianist.blogspot.com/

A Bay Area reviewer isn’t quite ready to hand the Chopin crown to the hot young Polish pianist….

His performance May 4 at Le Petit Trianon in San Jose, which concluded with the Preludes, the full two dozen, was very, very good: Blechacz has an awesome command of the keyboard, plays with a stunning ease.

But he also seems to realize – I’m projecting here – that he needs to transcend his mechanics, to plumb the depths. So, at least on Sunday, amid the stream of jaw-dropping technique, he kept making these stabs at introspection. They didn’t exactly seem premeditated; in fact, they were charming. But they didn’t reach their marks.

He needs seasoning, in other words. And it will be interesting to follow him the next few years, to see where his huge gifts and his intuition lead him. [...]

After intermission came Chopin’s Preludes, exquisite and familiar.

In the first dozen, comprising Book I, Blechacz didn’t get past what we already know about them. For instance, No. 4, the famous E minor “Largo,” was all cliche: earnest melancholy.

But before beginning Book II, he drew out a handkerchief and wiped off the keys. It wasn’t meant as a symbolic gesture, yet, from that point on, his performance gained traction: pointillist bursts in No. 18, the F minor; anvil chords and brokenhearted lyricism in No. 20, the C minor; scary agitation in No. 22, the G minor.

No. 24 in D minor, the closer, ran out of drama; Blechacz seemed tired. But he recovered for the last encore, Moszkowski’s “La Jongleuse” (“The Lady Juggler”), a crazily difficult piece through which he flew with the greatest of ease. The amazing young man may as well have been pulling taffy.

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Magnetic Poles
guardian.co.uk – UK

Another glowing review for a journey through modern Poland by Australian author Michael Moran, who “had no links with Poland, other than a death bed pledge to his uncle to try to understand the patriotic roots of Chopin’s music.”

When Moran escapes the crumbling school, the book is lifted on to another plane. By following the course of the Vistula – one of the last great natural rivers in Europe – and then criss-crossing the country during the first international car rally in generations, he begins to fill the absences in our knowledge. On the road he relates – for example — the history of Partition, when thousands of intellectuals were forced to walk to Siberia – an 18-month journey – where they were chained to wheelbarrows night and day and worked to death. He considers our debt to the 8,500 Polish airmen whose élan and tactics helped to win the Battle of Britain. He details the iniquity of the Katyn massacre and betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising. He celebrates Chopin and the “frisson of close Polish dancing”. His breadth of knowledge is profound, his views opinionated, his writing passionate and heart-felt. The result is the best contemporary travel book on Poland, reminiscent in its finest moments of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s masterful Time of Gifts

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Gilmore Festival performer Stephen Hough masterfully executes …
Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com – Kalamazoo,MI,USA

The British pianist (recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant) writes the notes, then plays the program, to memorable effect…

The printed program notes, written by Hough himself, explained the first half of the concert centered on “Variations,” the second on the Waltz. He opened with Mendelssohn’s “Variations Serieuses,” Op. 54, comprised of two dozen very different variations. Quickly evident were Hough’s incredible hands and touch. Master of pianissimo and presto, he also commanded double fortes and andante passages; meanwhile his octave runs were unfailingly prodigious. [...]

Wed to his sensitive insights was extraordinary keyboard technique, evidenced further in the remainder of the program featuring Weber, Saint-Saens, Chabrier, Debussy and, fortunately for all, Chopin and Liszt.

Two familiar Chopin Waltzes –the C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2, and the A-flat Major, Op. 34, No. 1 — were gorgeously played. Each note was given full attention, as though never heard before. In the A-flat Major waltz, Hough showed uncanny ability to sound different melodic lines, played by a single hand. The effect was astonishing.

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Recital shows pianist Ohlsson at top of his game
Akron Beacon Journal – Akron,OH,USA

Whenever Garrick Ohlsson plays, Chopin is never very far away. First line says it all: “Garrick Ohlsson makes a virtue of middle age.”

Continuing in the key of C-sharp minor, Ohlsson knocked out a thrillingly fast and accurate version of the Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 4. It was a wild ride that could only make you smile.

”One more?” Ohlsson silently mouthed to someone at the front of the audience, grinning as he asked. He proceeded with the Chopin Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2. Here, he dazzled with the delicacy and lightness of his playing.

Oh, yes, there was more before the encores. [...]

Finishing the first half with Chopin’s Sonata No. 3, Op. 58 was a move well calculated to get everyone buzzing with oohs and aahs. This was not the Chopin of a delicate aesthete but of a full-blooded romantic, with jaw-dropping fast runs and a galloping rhythmic drive in the finale.

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Ohlsson’s performance (above) also inspires a video posting on the blog below:

Chopin Prelude Op 45 Prelude No.16 Op.25 Garrick Ohlsson
By Cheryl and Janet Snell(Cheryl and Janet Snell)

Janet took our mom to see this pianist last night. He played three encores after a finger-crunching program. The Chopin was a sonata, not this Prelude, but you get the idea.
Scattered Light – http://snellsisters.blogspot.com/

BBC dedicates weekend to Chopin
BBC News – UK

BBC Radio 3 announces a blockbuster weekend dedicated to Chopin (May 17-18, 2008, including the launch of “a dedicated website, launched as part of the Chopin weekend, will feature video piano lessons by pianist David Owen Norris, for those who want to try their hand at some of Chopin’s more approachable pieces.”

BBC Radio 3 is to broadcast every note written by Frederic Chopin during a weekend dedicated to the Polish composer, who died in 1849 aged 39.

The Chopin Experience, which runs on 17-18 May, follows similiar tributes by the station to Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

The weekend will explore how Chopin revolutionised piano music, as well as his troubled personal life.

The weekend will also include the most famous recordings of Chopin’s work.

His set of 24 Etudes will be aired in unbroken sequence featuring 24 different pianists.

Piano lessons

Dedicated programmes will look at the influence of Polish folk music on the composer – and how the composer continues to influence the Polish music scene….

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Radio 3 announces weekend of Chopin

The Press Association –
Every note written by Polish composer Frederic Chopin is to be broadcast in a single weekend on Radio 3. The Chopin Experience follows a Beethoven week, …
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PERFORMING ARTS: Sergio Tiempo
Washington Post – United States

Review of a DC recital by thirtysomething protege of Martha Argerich….critic finds his passion praiseworthy, the technical slips less so…

Sergio Tiempo, the immensely talented Venezuelan-born pianist, uses his colossal technique to produce a spectrum of colors and dynamic nuance from the piano. His program at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Saturday afternoon included Haydn’s delightful Sonata in D, Hob. XVI: 37; Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 in B Minor; Ravel’s suite “Gaspard de la Nuit”; and the “Consolation” No. 3 and “Mephisto” Waltz No. 1 of Liszt….

Tiempo also possesses a golden singing sound, ravishingly displayed in the Chopin and Liszt pieces…. The same lyrical impulse pervaded the Haydn sonata, in an interpretation perhaps more operatic than symphonic.

Tiempo’s great strength is his white-hot intensity. When combined with his cultivated musical intelligence, it achieves strikingly original results. Yet his passionate exuberance occasionally overflows into impetuousness. Hyperkinetic momentum resulted in memory slips in movements of the Haydn and Chopin sonatas. And structural integrity in the Chopin finale and the “Mephisto” Waltz was undermined by unchecked fortissimo power surges. But these missteps could not diminish the visceral excitement of the program.

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Alexander Kobrin, Skillful Pianist
Baltimore Sun – United States

Kobrin, The reigning Van Cliburn champ, comes to Bahlmore and gets a mixed review….

Alexander Kobrin, the Russian pianist who took the gold at the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition, breezed through Baltimore – and a Beethoven-Chopin program – Sunday at a packed Har Sinai Congregation in Owings Mills. The free recital, another generous gift to the music community from the Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust, reaffirmed the great technical fluency I observed from Kobrin during the Cliburn finals, but left me somewhat less impressed when it came to his stylistic and interpretive matters. (I wasn’t too keen on the many restless and cell phone-ridden members of the audience, either.)

[...]

Kobrin, who is not yet out of his 20s, maintained a dry-eyed demeanor when he turned to Chopin, avoiding anything strikingly individualistic in the shaping of line or rhythmic pulse, and he continued to push things along when given half a chance. Still, there were elegant touches along the way, especially in a group of Impromptus. It will be interesting to see, and hear, how Kobrin’s career unfolds.

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Cellist Jan Vogler finds voices
Philadelphia Inquirer – Philadelphia,PA,USA

A Jekyll-and-Hyde performance by the East German-born cellist in Philly, featuring boring Beethoven, but captivating Chopin….

He seemed, at first, like one kind of cellist, and then another. Until the end of his Sunday afternoon recital at Independence Seaport Museum, when you realized that Jan Vogler was intent on crafting stylistic approaches so different to each composer, you might have been left searching for the musician’s core personality.

With sturdy and accommodating pianist Louis Lortie as his partner, the cellist with a sweet smile and a straight mop of sandy hair limited his range of colors in Beethoven’s Sonata in A major (Op. 69), and even in Schumann’s Opus 73 Fantasiestücke.

So much so that a certain monotony set in. Vogler’s tone is rather nasal, which to these ears made him a considerably less interesting cellist than one usually hears at these Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concerts.

It made him less interesting, too, than the cellist he became after intermission, in Takemitsu’s Orion (from 1984), Chopin’s Sonata in G minor (Op. 65), and an encore of the Falla Ritual Fire Dance.

Who was that playing those beefy pizzicato notes in the Falla? In the Takemitsu, where Debussy was never too far harmonically, microtones and slides granted Vogler permission to become almost vocally expressive. And where had that cellist been who was now intensely searching each phrase for emotional meaning in the Chopin?

Beethoven can withstand that kind of treatment, too – happily so, though not on this day.

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Award gave Argentine’s career a lift
Fort Worth Star Telegram – Fort Worth,TX,USA

Texas-sized profile and Q & A with Gilmore Award winner Ingrid Fliter, who reveals that literally owes her life to Chopin…

Why did you choose to feature pieces by Chopin on your new CD?

My father used to play the piano. That’s the way my parents met at a party — my mother noticed my father while he was playing on the piano some Chopin waltzes. So I have to say that I exist thanks to Chopin.

What do you love about Chopin’s Sonata No. 3, which you’ll play Tuesday at the Kimbell?

I think it is one of the most important and one of the most beautiful pieces Chopin wrote. That sonata gives you a very huge spectrum of Chopin’s sound world. I have the feeling that all the human experiences are put in that sonata. It is very touching to me

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href=”http://www.youtube.com/v/0X-PRpqj7N4&hl=en”>

VideoSong 4 – Radiohead/Chopin Matchup

See it to believe it….

1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).Radiohead’s Exit Music for a Film matched with a prelude by Chopin, Op. 28, no. …
Digg / upcoming – http://digg.com/

Chopin in the FloralSphere:

CHOPIN-ESQUE?
By Daniel Mount(Daniel Mount)

Did you know that there was a Chopin tulip?

This kaufmaniana tuilp “Chopin” is short but bold, as yellow as a yield sign with a flaming pointed petal form.
– http://danielmount.blogspot.com/

New Chopin Downloads:

Chopin Files on AmieStreet.com
By ArtMusicReview4818
Pianist hugh sung has just made his first set of solo keyboard compositions by Frederic chopin available for purchase on Amie Street. hugh sung’s renditions of the Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 69 No. 1, the Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. …
Art Music Review – http://ArtMusicReview4818.rticlz.com

Dyngus Day to proclaim Polish pride
Buffalo News – NY, United States

Today we tip our hat to the venerable Chopin Singing Society, proud keepers of the Dyngus Day flame in Western New York…

For the clueless, Dyngus Day is a Polish-American tradition marking the end of Lent, the 40- day period of prayer and self-denial preceding Christianity’s joyous celebration of Easter. The unofficial holiday — typically observed with pussy willows and squirt guns — has been observed in Buffalo since the first Polish immigrants arrived in the 1870s.

However, after the Chopin Singing Society held the first modern celebration on Kosciusko Street in 1961, Dyngus Day began to outgrow its ethnic and geographic confines. It is now celebrated by Poles and non- Poles throughout Buffalo and Western New York.

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Preparing for a party
Cheektowaga Times – NY, USA

More on Dyngus Day…

Judge Ann Mikoll of the Chopin Singing Society agrees, noting that Dyngus Day is not a religious holiday.

“It’s a social get-together that’s based on a long-standing tradition over the centuries,” Mikoll added.

The day has become so popular in the area that it inspired Jerry Darlak and the Buffalo Touch to record a song, “Everybody’s Polish on Dyngus Day,” that immediately became a local hit. One of the lead singers for the Touch, Ray Barsukiewicz, is credited with penning the lyrics.

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Other Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Dance Review: Complexions Contemporary Ballet
Jerusalem Post – Israel

Another modern ballet work set to the timeless music of Chopin, (though with yet another spelling of his first name!) on tour in Israel:

“Dear Fredric,” which opened the evening, is perhaps a more ambitious work, set to music by Chopin. The strong and highly physical troop was challenged in this piece, which required stamina and rapid, powerful movements. With this athletic sprint approach, though, too little attention was dedicated to Chopin’s spirit. It didn’t take long before the congested dance phrases became tedious.

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Listening Post: Music from ‘Heroes,’ Switches, Mozart, Koz and more
Buffalo News – NY, United States

A Dyngus Day review of Alexander Tharaud’s new Chopin/Mompou CD:

Chopin and Mompou, “Preludes and Etudes,” Alexandre Tharaud, piano (Harmonia Mundi). I like the thought that Tharaud gives to his music. He wants to perform Chopin’s 24 Preludes without a pause, so I’m guessing he recorded them that way — and you have to respect any pianist who doesn’t take advantage of modern technology to edit everything to death. Tharaud’s strength at the piano is his crisp, controlled tone. He can get wild, and sometimes his herky-jerky tempos can throw off the character of some of the more delicate pieces — the second of Chopin’s “Trois Nouvelles Etudes,” for instance. But he boldly brings out inner voices and draws your attention, gently, to harmonies you may have not noticed before. The approach gives poetry to the more harmonically challenging Mompou. _★★★ (M.K.G.)

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Chopin Videos:

Chopin Prelude e-minor
By Admin

Chopin on a dark Polish road…

… src=”http://img.youtube.com/vi/atW2XWdR2b8/2.jpg” width=”320″ height=”240″ border=”1″ />Chopin Prelude e-minor

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Music and ‘the Man’

In-depth profile of pianist Byron Janis, who describes his affinity for Chopin:

But it was a Polish composer who may have had the greatest influence: Chopin was always a favorite, and Janis returned the favor, credited with discovering two once-lost Chopin waltzes, a find called “the most dramatic musical discovery of our age.”

At 80, Janis reflects: “It was a defining moment of my life; I felt like I was being led to them.”

He has taken the lead since that 1967 discovery of the 1832 waltz works, which Chopin had written “for a lady friend; how he loved the women.”
Jewish Exponent – Philadelphia,PA,USA
And Chopin has touched his lively life in many ways. The McKeesport, Pa., kid of Russian-Jewish heritage who was born Byron Yanks is a Yankee Doodle Dandy …
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Two-Part Tribute to Byron Janis Begins March 8

More on Byron Janis….

Playbill.com – New York,NY,USA
At 6 PM March 10, “An Evening of Song with Pianist as Composer with a Touch of Chopin” will be offered. The concert will feature a host of theatre …
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Room for improvement

Fascinating discussion on a music-instruction blogsite using a Chopin Etude to illustrate the teaching of harmony…

By Alan Coady
It’s of Chopin’s Etude Op 10 No 1. There are more professional performances of this on YouTube but many are so fast that it’s difficult to hear the detail. This one, although not entirely error-free does have a certain tenderness about …
Alan Coady’s Musical Blog – http://edubuzz.org/blogs/alancoady

Chopin
By That Canadian Guy(That Canadian Guy)
So apparently there is a videogame based loosely on Chopin’s life. It’s called ‘Eternal Sonata’. Chopin is actually a playable character, and his music is found throughout. The character looks like Chopin as well. …
Life, Love, and Everything In Between – http://madman-ramblings.blogspot.com/

Chopin in the Videosphere:

YouTube – Yundi Li plays Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2

Ignore the incorrectly-embedded title of it being “Op. 66″

Yundi Plays Chopin! … Related Videos. Maurizio Pollini plays Chopin Nocturne no. 8 op. 27 no. 2. 04:43 From: joynes89. Views: 366648 …