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 Garden main stage in New York’s World Financial Center. Ms Smolina is among the virtuosi performing in the 200 hour Wall Street marathon celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth.

Chopin once wrote, “When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.”Upon further reflection, Chopin must have realized that this Waltz was an all-time keeper, a favorite of piano virtuosos and amateurs alike since Chopin’s own time. It was a notable favorite of Artur Rubinstein. In fact, the Chopin.Net site has a nice anecdote about Rubinstein:

When people asked him how he could continue to play the same waltz for over 75 years, he replied, “Because it’s not the same, and I don’t play it the same way.”

• Download sheetmusic for Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download Easy to play sheetmusic for Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin

Hear Chopin Project pianist Christina Thayer Fox perform Chopin’s Waltz in A minor.

Now, for the mystery part: There is a lot of confusion over the title and date of this Waltz. It was published after Chopin’s death, and therefore carries no opus number (It is not to be confused with the Waltz in A Minor, Op. 34, No. 2). In fact, the most popular published score didn’t appear until 1955! So as a result it can be harder to track down recordings and scores….so we’ve done it for you!

• Listen to Waltz in A Minor by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Waltz in A Minor by Fryderyk Chopin
• Find “Easy-to-Play Chopin” sheet music for Waltz in A Minor by Fryderyk Chopin

Piano Archives: Arturo Benedetti Michelangelo = SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54; LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major; RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 40; CHOPIN: Waltz

Audiophile Audition – USA

Chopin plays a bit part in this reissue CD that has this critic reaching for superlatives…

When you purchase this magnificent CD, better have asbestos gloves on and a fireproof CD player! Rarely have I heard even the great Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920- 1995) in such blistering form, his tensile strength and febrile temperament thoroughly in accord in all three collaborations, 1953-1956. For the collector, the Rachmaninov Fourth Concerto ( 12 May 1956), previously unpublished, with Franco Caracciolo (1944-1992) will more than complement Michelangeli’s commercial recording with Gracis for EMI. [...]

The posthumous waltz by Chopin hardly qualifies as “charming,” but it has a granite-like glitter thoroughly in keeping with the Rachmaninov lusters.

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BBCSO/Belohlávek at the Barbican
Times Online – UK

Today’s Ingrid Fliter installment finds our heroine at the piano bench at the Barbican…

Turning up to a concert hall to find that Chopin has been substituted for Szymanowski is a bit like turning up to a dinner party to find that the roast beef has been swapped for crème brulée. But for the young Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter, Chopin is a serious business. And just moments into her dynamic performance of the Piano Concerto No 2 I had stopped missing the indisposed Piotr Anderszewski (originally down for Szymanowksi’s Sinfonia Concertante) and was hooked.

Yes, there was a rich sweetness to Fliter’s playing – you cannot have Chopin without sugar, not least in the luscious larghetto – but plenty of fibre and muscle as well. Not for nothing has Fliter been compared to her great compatriot Martha Argerich: there’s a similar vitality, an engaging restlessness that imbued some of Chopin’s most dreamy sub-plots with enough snappiness and tang to keep us on our toes.

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Hear Chopin Project pianist Jei-Yern Ryu perform Chopin’s effervescent Waltz in E-flat, Op. 18.

• Listen to Grande Valse Brillante in E-flat, Op. 18 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Grande Valse Brillante in E-flat, Op. 18 by Fryderyk Chopin

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/

Chopin News, Reviews, & Previews:

A scintillating fiesta of melodies
The News – International – Pakistan

It’s not often we get Chopin reviews from Karachi!

The evening’s programme opened the Polish-French composer Frederick Francois Chopin’s Waltz in F Major. Ayesha Tariq gave a delightfully precise interpretation of the composer’s characteristic style, buoyant, perky and lively. The way her fingers moved over the keyboard in quick time with perfect ease, really made the rendition come alive with exuberance and vivacity.

Ayesha, originally from Uzbekistan, and married to a Pakistani in Karachi, is a graduate of the Tashkent Conservatoire and has been playing the piano since she was seven. She certainly stole the show of the evening with her wizardry at the keyboard.

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Review: Fliter plays with passion, precision
Kansas City Star – MO,USA

Ingrid Fliter’s fingers fly impressively in KC….

The second half of the program displayed Fliter’s comfort with Chopin, from the intimacy of the Nocturne in B Major, Op. 9, No. 3, to the complexity of the Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58.

While Fliter impressed with the ascending left-hand chromaticism of the Allegro maestoso and the presto flash of the opening measures of the Molto vivace, it was the third movement, the Largo, that was representative of this 34-year-old pianist’s manner: a flow of beauty in the arpeggios, and a delicate precision of melody and passionate crescendoes.

Fliter played two encores, the first was the crowd-pleasing Minute Waltz.

But it was the second that provided another highlight (besides the Chopin Largo): Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera’s “Danza del gaucho matrero.”

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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Chopin in Motion: Simplicity, Virtuosity, Structure
By George Jackson

A Danceviewtimes review of an Isadora Duncan revival in Bethesda, MD takes a fascinating detour into the history of Chopin and Dance….

Six of the pieces were to Chopin’s music and particularly the “Prelude” (Duncan 1902; Chopin Opus 28 #7) and the “Mazurka” (Duncan undated; Chopin Opus 33 #3) reminded me of Mikhail Fokine’s ballet “Les Sylphides” that historians tell us was “supposedly” influenced by Duncan. . The Duncan dances move persistently, they pulse musically and posses a purity and simplicity [...]

There were other Chopin ballets in the early 1900s. Stockholm had one and so did Vienna. The Viennese one, “Chopin’s Dances”, might have influenced Fokine. Formally at least, it sounds like the first version Fokine made of his Chopin ballet and titled “Chopiniana”. “Chopin’s Dances” premiered two years earlier than the Fokine, on 16 April 1905 at the Court Opera in Vienna on a bill with the operas “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “I Pagliacci”. It had choreography by Josef Hassreiter and initially was to have told a bit of a story – “… Chopin would have appeared on stage, and loved and died in the course of a pas de deux and ballabile”. That “starting” notion was rejected. The result was plotless. “Chopin’s Dances” proved to be long: an hour and a quarter’s worth of national character and classical dances. “The unfortunately piecemeal nature of the music was countered by the charm of the dances.” Particular praise went to the “Minute Waltz”, a pointe variation for ballerina Irene Sironi. “The familiar and beloved music together with the precision and dance joy of the ensemble earned the work much applause and secured it a place in the repertory”. Actually, “Chopin’s Dances” lasted only three seasons in its entirety and totaled just 20 performances in the years 1905 to 1907. However, some of its numbers were added to the divertissements in Johann Strauss’s operetta “Die Fledermaus.”….

danceviewtimes – http://www.danceviewtimes.com/

#1 — In 1835, while in Dresden trying to find a cure or some relief for his “consumption”, Chopin renews his acquaintence with the Wodzinski family, who had lived in his father’s boarding house back in Poland years before. Their young daughter Maria is an accomplished pianist in her own right and Chopin falls in love with her. She is 17, he is 25.#2 — They maintain a strong relationship by letter and see each other periodically as Chopin criss-crosses Europe giving concerts and teaching the aristocracy. Not long after on September 9, 1936, Chopin proposes marriage during a holiday together, chaparoned by Marie’s mother. Marie accepts.#3 — Marie’s family tells the couple that the engagement will not be “official” until Chopin proves that he is gonna live long enough to take care of their daughter! He gets a one year trial period to improve his failing health or all bets are off. He also needs to prove that he can provide a stable home environment. Due to continual travelling and performing, he has not yet set up a permanent home.#4 — So into this milieu marches Georg Sand. They meet approximately October 24, 1836, a month or so after Chopin proposes to Marie. Chopin is ill and realizes he just may be rejected by Marie’s family as decent husband material. Sand is separated and soon divorced from her Baron husband and has 2 children, a boy, Maurice and a girl, Solange.#5 — As luck would have it, Chopin cannot do what the Wodzinski family requires of him. He becomes very ill over the winter months and eventually meets Marie in Germany the early part of July, 1837 after a series of concerts in England and the Netherlands. Marie’s family sees the state of his frail health and instructs her to reject his proposal….by letter….later. By the time he returns to Paris toward the end of July, he receives word of the broken “unofficial” engagement. He wraps Marie’s correspondence and the rejection letter in a bundle and labels it “My Sorrow”.

Other factoids, courtesy of Wikipedia:

This song was heard in The Others and in an episode of Mad TV where Stuart gets piano lessons. It is prominently used in the PC game Alone in the Dark as both the game over music and as a song you can hear if you pick up a gramaphone and a certain record, though this version is played in a different tempo.

Hear pianist Chih-long Hu play Chopin’s farewell piece – the Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, No. 1 , in a Chopin Project live performance at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

• Listen to Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, No. 1 L’Adieu by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, No. 1 L’Adieu by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download Easy to Play sheetmusic for Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, No. 1 L’Adieu by Fryderyk Chopin

Cellist Oh Ah-mi’s Courageous Crossover
Korea Times – South Korea

The world’s first self-described “crossover cellist,” breaks conventions by adding dance moves to the still-standing cello performance. “I am inspired by Vanessa Mae’s passionate playing and Beyonce’s strong stage presence” she says…

`It’s really demanding, so I just have to practice that much more,” she said. Though not a trained dancer, Oh enjoys dancing and worked with a choreographer to create moves. In her first showcase performance at Seongnam Art Center tonight, her cello will be her dance partner as she waltzes to “Chopin’s Party of Dupin,” which was inspired by the Waltze (Op. 64 No. 2).`\

Two were inspired by well-known Chopin and Dvorak music. “(The composer and I) discussed our work a lot. I wanted to reinterpret the music and make them …
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Review: Traces – Les 7 Doigts de la Main
The Dominion Post – Wellington,New Zealand

Chopin cheek-by-jowl with Chinese acrobats and skateboarders….

There’s endearing Chopin played live on a wonky piano, and a girl made of rubber who reads on (and through, over, under, and off) an even wonkier armchair. …
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

The Geometry Of Music
Partyvibes – Netherlands

From a Dutch blog: Chopin the cubist’s delight, via Princeton professor Dmitri Tymoczko:

Tymoczko looked at the piece and watched the composition’s motion through his geometrical space, he saw that Chopin was moving in a systematic way among the different layers of the four-dimensional cubes. “It’s almost as if he’s an improviser with a set of rules and set of constraints,” Tymoczko says.

Music theorists have long found Chopin’s E minor prelude puzzling. , Although the chord progressions sound smooth to the ear, they don’t quite follow the …
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Rajka – Group 3 – Tiny Murders
By seaglassgirl

To what nationality does Chopin truly belong? From an online writing workshop….

I am back in my chair, with the half-cup of Cappuccino. I put my feet up and listen, again, to Chopin. I wonder: to whom does he belong? To everyone, to no one. Another soul who transcends us all and makes us whole. Content, I listen.
Opening the Circle – http://writingfromtheheart.wordpress.com

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 …

Hear Artistic Director Arthur Greene play this brilliantly conceived Waltz in A-flat (Op. 42) live in a Chopin Project performance.

Chopinmusic calls it “the most ambitious and substantial of all Chopin’s waltzes.”

The Vancouver Chopin Society goes even further, quoting David Dubal in suggesting that this “Grand Valse” is the essence of Chopin:

A case may be made for the Op. 42 as Chopin’s most perfect valse. After the first measures of trill, a call to the dance, there is a melody with a rare lilt composed in double time, with the triple time of the waltz in the left hand. Schumann remarked that “like his earlier waltzes it is a salon piece of the noblest kind.” The composition, Schumann feels, should be danced to only by “countesses at least.” This waltz is the most demanding technically of the series.

Chopin’s official title for the piece is the Grande Valse Nouvelle pour le piano, Op. 42. There’s a fascinating detail of its publication history available at Chopin First Editions Online.

• Listen to Waltz in A-flat, Op. 42 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Waltz in A-flat, Op. 42 by Fryderyk Chopin

Though, according to the Vancouver Chopin Society,

The composer Stephen Heller related that Chopin called this slow (Lento) waltz his favorite. When Heller told the Pole that he, too, loved it best, Chopin immediately invited him for lunch at a fashionable cafe. Frederick Niecks wrote of this piece, “The composer evidently found pleasure in giving way to this delicious languor, in indulging in these melancholy thoughts full of sweetest, tenderest loving and longing.”

Hear pianist Polina Khatsko play this poignant Waltz in A minor, Op. 34, No. 2 in a Chopin Project live performance at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

• Listen toWaltz in A minor, Op. 34, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Waltz in A minor, Op. 34, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin

Chopin Commentary, News, Reviews, & Previews

Answers to Reader Questions

Celebrated neurologist and author Oliver Sacks responds to New York Times’ readers queries about “amusic” migraine auras. Sacks recounts a passage from his best-selling book “Musicophilia…”
New York Times – United States
On the first, I was driving along the Bronx River Parkway, listening to a Chopin ballade on the radio, when a strange alteration of the music occurred. …
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Lang Lang Plays Recital With LA Orchestra
Huliq.com, a new site of “citizen blogger journalism” prints full press release announcing Lang Lang recital at Disney Hall on March 4….
HULIQ – Hickory,NC,USA
He went on to win first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians Competition and played the complete 24 Etudes of Chopin at the Beijing …
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Beethoven and the Bronx

Nice profile of pianist Richard Goode in UK daily in advance of his next performance in London… “This season, he has taken on a role as the first associate artist at the Southbank Centre in London. Goode began his residency last autumn by giving a recital with soprano Dawn Upshaw that included Schoenberg’s rarely heard song cycle The Book of the Hanging Garden. This month, he returns to London for a solo recital of Bach, Chopin, Mozart and Debussy, a series of masterclasses and a lecture recital devoted to Chopin. In May, he makes his final appearance in a piano duo recital with fellow American Jonathan Biss.”

Guardian Unlimited – UK
This month, he returns to London for a solo recital of Bach, Chopin, Mozart and Debussy, a series of masterclasses and a lecture recital devoted to Chopin. …
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CLASSICAL MUSIC

Hungarian pianist Peter Petris emerges from artistic hiatus for a DC-area recital with mixed results…
Washington Post – United States
The three Chopin dances, including the famous C-sharp Minor and “Minute” waltzes of Op. 64, were rhythmically destabilized by a curiously eccentric rubato. …
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More Chopin Currency:

Chopin calling card
By Administrator
The Chopin calling card offers crystal quality of connection and lowest overseas and domestic calling rates to multiple destinations. Chopin phone card provided by NTC telecom carriers and has Global Access numbers all over the world. …
Telecom blog – Calling cards,… – http://phonebestcard.com/blog

Chopin in the Blogosphere

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

A musician’s favorite Chopin? An inscrutable site…..

By Mark Alburger(Mark Alburger)
Frederic Chopin (March 10, 1810 – October 17, 1849) Nocturne in Eb (1830) Etude (“Revolutionary”), Op. 10, No. 12 (1831) Mazurka in Bb Major, Op. 7, No. 1 (1832) Preludes (1839) No. 1 in C Major No. 2 in A Minor No. 3 in G Major …
Music History – http://markalburgermusichistory.blogspot.com/

Piano no Mori

Chopin anime?

They played chopin one minute waltz. yeah, its a famous song but i still love it cause it’s chopin. Oh, and they also played Bhetoven’s fur elise, which i hand mimicked along while watching (yay for finger muscle memory haha). oh, …
Blogs – MyAnimeList.net – http://myanimelist.net/blog.php

Stark-Iochmans: No flash, but a workmanlike effort
Providence Journal – Providence,RI,USA
Stark-Iochmans turned to Chopin to close out the afternoon, the composer’s Fourth Ballade in F Minor. Again this contained some beautiful playing, …
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Chopin: Waltzes, Impromptus
By Bl’ogre(Bl’ogre)
This RCA Red Seal CD boasts Arthur Rubinstein’s interpretation of Chopin. I would have to admit that it is until these recordings that I have a new feeling regarding Chopin. Before, I enjoyed the virtuous line as a chain of fioriture, …
BListener’s Choice – http://blistener.blogspot.com/

Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2
By Candy Mok(Candy Mok)
By Yundi Li.
Cotton Candyland – http://candymok.blogspot.com/

This Waltz in F minor, in fact, steps right out of a Parisian drawing-room. It’s one of two works dedicated to Elise Gavard (she was also the dedicate of the Berceuse in D Flat major, Op. 57 – more on that in a later post). It was composed in 1842, but was not published until 1855, six years after Chopin’s death. Indeed there’s some scholarly speculation that Chopin didn’t really want it to circulate very much. The Chopin Music site calls it a work of beauty amidst lost longing:

This dance is a gloomy song of failed entreaty. Its melody glances slightly at that which it temporarily enjoyed. The central section is one of absolute beauty, characterizing its style almost perfectly.

Hear Soyoung Park perform Chopin’s Waltz in F minor, Op. 70, No. 2 at the Chopin Project Concert VIII.

• Listen to Waltz in F minor, Op. 70, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Waltz in F minor, Op. 70, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin