Listen now to her effervescent performance of Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64 No. 2:

• Listen to Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin

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

With excitement and gratitude for Fryderyk Chopin’s music, we celebrate his 200th Birthday by introducing our newest feature – The Chopin Project Audio Player. Click the red “Listen Now” button and music will play. Click on a different title and it will (or should) play. Make a Playlist. Sort by Genre, Key and Year. Have some fun with it. Let us know what you think and how we can improve it.

Now that Chopin’s music is playing, enjoy a captivating view of the Global Community of Chopin Year Celebrants with Chopin Planet. Click the center of the spinning globe to activate a more complete visual experience. (If your browser isn’t responsive, try Firefox).The lights represent the cities of all visitors to the site during the past few months or so; the pulsing red lights represent current visitors, including you.

While the composer’s music was sublime, his personality was another matter entirely

Chopin is no less fascinating for being a difficult personality. Novelist, journalist, pre-concert talker, blogger – Jessica Duchen joins others, including Chopin’s lover George Sand, in casting a critical eye on the musician’s relationships with others. The exquisite sensibility that produced music overflowing with feeling also made the composer hard to live with. — Eve

It’s never a good idea to judge art by the artist’s character, as we too often do these days, and there are few better examples of why not than Frédéric Chopin. He is set to be the romantic hero of 2010, his bicentenary year: concert halls and record companies are preparing a barrage of celebratory events and CDs. But anniversaries can be mixed blessings for the dead: look closely at any adored individual and it is likely that something less than savoury will be lurking. There’s no doubting the greatness of the Polish pianist-composer’s music; but that greatness came at a heavy price for those who were close to him, or tried to be . . . Click to read more

Emanuel Ax

Ring in the New Year

Stephen Dankner reports Polish-American pianist Emanuel Ax will present a solo recital at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, MA on Saturday, Jan. 2, at 7:30 p.m.  commemorating of the 200th birthdays of Frederyk Chopin and Robert Schumann, and promises a thrilling experience.

A brilliant young musician’s mysterious change in direction

A LOCAL LIFE: Preble Earle Donoho, 79

By T. Rees Shapiro
Washington Post

Starting in the late 1930s, when he was in knee pants, Preble Earle Donoho was the Washington area’s leading piano prodigy.Before reaching his teens, “Prib,” as he was known, was a veteran of major concert halls from Washington to New York. The Washington Post wrote that he played with “brilliance, speed, power and accuracy.” The Washington Star described him as “mature musically and technically beyond his years.” Click to read the full text of Mr. Shapiro’s story.

Newspaper obituaries used to be assigned to rookies. Now they have bylines. Obits can sum up the themes in a person’s life, the key meanings a person gives to those  left behind. Preble Earl Donoho (”Prib”) was a prodigy, a boy for whom music was a gift; and yet he abandoned Chopin recitals to become a newspaper typesetter. Mr. Donoho was raised to be a concert pianist; he wanted to be a spy. What’s the meaning? We all have multiple possible lives. A gift does not always carry with it a compulsion to be used. For Mr. Donoho, the mysteries of everyday life were ultimately more seductive than the melodies of Chopin. -Eve

Shanghai Marathon to Celebrate 200 Years of Chopin

SHANGHAI’S artistic directors are working overtime to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth next year.  Piano lovers are in for a treat as the world’s top interpreters visit for a series of awe-inspiring concerts, notes Nie Xin. 

For people in Shanghai, 2010 is a speical year. Besides the six-month World Expo, next year also marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of great pianist and composer Frederic Chopin.

The classical music stage in Shanghai has geared up to celebrate the master’s influence as a great Polish composer.

The first heavyweight event will be kicked off in January by Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) with its “12-Hour Chopin Marathon” at Shanghai Concert Hall. 

Read more: http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=423710&type=Feature#ixzz0aehe6ePV

Arthur Greene:

“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 the version I’m playing here has a bit of a twist. There are some scores of Chopin’s works that he marked up for his piano students, and they’ve been a fascinating find for musicologists. You can see where he marked things on the scores, adding fingerings and other instructions for his students. And in some of them Chopin added extra notes – and even little cadenzas! So if you know this beloved Nocturne, listen extra closely, and you’ll hear some things that aren’t usually there.”

From Britton Recital Hall, listen to Arthur Greene perform Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Op. 9 No. 2 (original cadenzas)

• Listen to Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download Easy to Play sheetmusic for Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9, No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin

Performance Today is broadcast on 245 public radio stations across the country and reaches 1.1 million listeners each week. Since each station decides what time to air the program, the most direct route to hear the show is the Performance Today website (Program Archive June 1, 2009) until Tuesday, June 7th. 

On an earlier Performance Today program, host Fred Child, described the Chopin Project as

“. . . working towards being a comprehensive site of information about and music by, Frederic Chopin: lots of audio, lots of news bits, and . . . even a Chopin quotepage!. This is kind of Wikipedia-style project and they’re inviting YOUR feedback and YOUR information as well. ”

• Download the sheetmusic and learn more about “Three Ecossaises,” Op. 72

We thank you for your comments! 

“One is loath to believe that the echo of Chopin’s magic music can ever fall upon unheeding ears.  He may become old-fashioned, but, like Mozart, he will remain eternally beautiful.”

Even for a piece barely more than a minute in length, the “eternally beautiful” Chopin cited by writer and pianist james Huneker (author of the definitive book Chopin: The Man and his Music) is evident in this brief Cantabile.    This little gem often turns up folios and other albums devoted to 19th-century miniatures, though it didn’t actually appear in print until 1931, nearly 100 years after Chopin compoosed it.

Cantabile, after all, is defined as “to sing or play in a sweetly singing manner.”  See if you don’t think that’s exactly what Chopin Project Pianist Noel McRobbie does in this performance…

• Listen to Cantabile in B-flat, KK 1230 (1834) by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download a Public Domain edition of the sheet music for Cantabile in B-flat, KK 1230 (1834) by Fryderyk Chopin

Song to Remember

Louisville Courier-Journal – Louisville,KY,USA

Louisville paper’s local Answer Man recalls a 1940s Chopin biopic…

Dear David Inman: My husband took me to see a movie on our first date back in 1945-46 called “Polonaise.” I cannot find any information on that movie and would like to know who the actors were. Hope you can help. — B.C., Louisville

Dear B.C.: In the words of The Little Engine That Could, I think I can.

There isn’t a movie actually titled “Polonaise,” but there is a piece of music by that title composed by Chopin. And the 1945 film “A Song to Remember” is a biography of Chopin in which he spends quite a bit of time on “Polonaise.” So I think that’s the movie you saw!

“A Song to Remember” stars Cornel Wilde as Chopin and Merle Oberon as his love, George Sand, who at one point says to Chopin, “Discontinue that so-called ‘Polonaise’ jumble you’ve been playing for days.” Ouch!

The movie’s on video, in case you were curious.

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Chopin Reviews:

PADEREWSKI: His Earliest Recordings, 1911-1912 – Ignace Jan Padereswski, piano…

Audiophile Audition – USA

The thorough online classical-CD review journal belies its “Audiophile” label to review some ancient recordings (on a Chopin-like Erard piano, no less!) by another Polish piano great from the past. “[Need we add - definitely not for audiophiles! The piano has long been the most difficult instrument to properly record, and 1911...well...good luck...Ed.].

Recording engineer Seth Winner has utilized the CEDAR process to remove the most obnoxious ticks, pops, surface abrasions without affecting the dominant acoustical signal, virtually a century old. Paderewski favored the Erard Piano, and its peculiar timbre and resonance manage to survive in varying degrees of presence. At their best, the acoustic discs sound as lively as good electrical recordings, and that is saying something. The A Major Polonaise of Chopin, for instance, rings clearly and establishes the nationalist and poet at once. Schubert’s “Hark! Hark! The Lark!” declaims without sentimentality, while Stojowski’s Chant d’amour suffers from poor sound and decidedly sheds a rueful tear. We detect in Paderewski’s technical arsenal a slight anticipation of the right hand in the left, the minute asymmetry adding to the textural piquancy of performance or the inaccuracy, according to a puritan’s lights. Otherwise filler passages often gain a sense of personal momentum and personality, and the rigors of metrical conformity do not bind Paderewski’s palpable adjustment of music to suit his unique personality.

The little Etude in G-flat of Chopin perfectly conveys this point, as sparkling and impish in its way as that of Hofmann. The Chopin Etude in F from Op. 25 struggles a bit, but when it does fly the effect is aerial. The A Minor Mazurka, Op. 17, No. 4 relates a marvelously bitter-sweet canvas, entirely idiomatic, with plastic grace-notes. Sweetly erotic nostalgia informs the Op. 15, No. 1 Nocturne in F, though the middle section offers some dark currents and intimations of muscular power that later technology might have served with more justice. Sensual flirtations mark the F-sharp Nocturne, Op. 15, No. 2, the seduction taking on more passion in its yearning trio….

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Hélène Grimaud CHOPIN / LISZT / SCHUMANN

By elhenry(elhenry)

From a blog called Music is the Key, which “aspires to share the taste for classical music and to promote its great composers and interpreters. If you like an album, buy it in order to support the artists and their work.” a classic Japanese-issue CD from Helene Grimaud gets the star of the day:

The Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 is the first of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin’s four ballades for piano solo. It was composed in 1835-36 during the composer’s early days in Paris, and is dedicated to “Monsieur le Baron de Stockhausen,” Hanoverian ambassador to France.
Chopin cited the poet Adam Mickiewicz as an influence for his ballades (this according to a rumour based on a remark by Robert Schumann concerning the genesis of Chopin’s second ballade). The exact inspiration for each piece is not clear.

Music Is The Key – http://orchestralworks.blogspot.com/

Warsaw

Bharath Devanathan’s blog – http://www.bhatta.net/blog

A travelogue around Eastern Europe from a Mumbai-born programmer…

Chopin Concerts

Warsaw is the home of Frederic Chopin, the great pianist and composer. During the summers, every Sunday, the famous Park Łazienkowski hosts free concerts, where professional pianists perform one of Chopin’s masterpieces. I happened to be there on a sunday and decided to check it out. Lots of people gather at the park, lying on the grass, around the water. Its a perfect setting for some soothing piano tunes on a lazy afternoon.

Today’s Desert Island Disc: Chopin Nocturnes (Angela Hewitt)

The Lost Art of Correspondence

Quotidian Vicissitudes – http://davidrochester.wordpress.com

Highly recommended reading from a blogger who isn’t a fan of Chopin’s music, but rather the composer’s writing:

Eye on Poland: Country at the Crossroads

CNN – USA

Announcement of an in-depth five-part series on Chopin’s native land to air in October:

“Eye on Poland: Country at the Crossroads” is a week-long CNN International series focusing on the color and contrast of one of Europe’s fastest developing nations; from business and politics to pop culture. CNN offers a series of wide-ranging reports on this complex country tackling a time of transition; from Warsaw to Sopot, to Gdansk, Krakow and Lodz.

Solidarity Avenue, the Chopin Monument, and the Palace of Culture and Science are just some of the backdrops for CNN’s live broadcasts during a week of programming hosted from Warsaw by Fionnuala Sweeney.

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How the classical concert took shape.

New Yorker – United States

The publication of two new books tracing the history of concert manners prompts the latest column from critic Alex Ross:

The audience sometimes participated without any prompting from the stage. Once, when Liszt was beginning a performance of the “Kreutzer” Sonata with the violinist Lambert Massart, listeners began calling out “Robert le Diable!”—meaning that they wished to hear instead Liszt’s fantasy on themes from the Meyerbeer opera. Liszt acceded to the demand and launched into his “Robert” fantasy. Imagine what would happen today if, just as Maurizio Pollini was playing the first of Chopin’s Études, concertgoers were to shout, “ ‘Claire de Lune’! ‘Claire de Lune’!”

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Prom 60: Lang Lang/Marc Yu at the Albert Hall/Radio 3

Times Online – UK

The Chinese superstar teams up with the 9-year old “Little Mozart” for a recital at the Royal Albert Hall; London critic suggests the “Little Mozart” deserves a better mentor….

As for Lang Lang, the remainder of his glitzy recital encompassed the full range of his freewheeling brilliance and completely infuriating mannerisms.

When it worked, it was tender, supple and, even in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall, surprisingly intimate.

Mozart’s Piano Sonata in B Flat Major unfolded with dream-like spontaneity.

Two thunderous Rachmaninov preludes, by contrast, were as bold and invigorating as a shot of double espresso. But, frothed into a gilded soufflé, Chopin’s Andante Spiniato and Grande Polonaise can have seldom sounded so empty.

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Marin Alsop To Lead Philharmonic in Four Concerts

Broadway World – New York,NY,USA

The charismatic Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director lands a prestigious guest-conducting slot in the Big Apple, with a Chopin wunderkind in tow…

Marin Alsop will lead the New York Philharmonic in four concerts, each featuring Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, October 7, 10, and 11, 2008. The programs on October 7 at 7:30 p.m. and October 11 at 8:00 p.m. will comprise Bartók’s The Wooden Prince Suite; Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with Rafał Blechacz making his New York Philharmonic debut.

Pianist Rafał Blechacz was born on June 30, 1985, in Nakło nad Notecią, Poland. He began studying the piano at the age of five and completed his formal education in 2007 at the Feliks Nowowiejski Music Academy in Bydgoszcz, studying with Professor Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron. He won second prize at the Arthur Rubinstein Young Pianist Competition in Bydgoszcz in 2002 and at the Fifth International Young Pianist Competition in Hamamatsu, Japan, in 2003. In 2004 he garnered first prize at the Fourth International Piano Competition in Morocco. In 2005 Mr. Blechacz won first prize at the 15th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw; in special recognition of his achievement, the jury decided, for the first time in the competition’s history, not to award a second prize. He also won four special prizes, including the Polish Radio Award for best performance of the mazurkas, the Polish Chopin Society Award for best performance of the Polonaise, the Warsaw Philharmonic Award for best performance of a concerto, and the award founded by Krystian Zimerman for best sonata performance.

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Chopin: Préludes (Music Review)

EDGEnewyork.com – http://www.EDGEnewyork.com

From the NYC GLBT online journal, quoting the Bay Area Reporter: “Even though his recordings for Harmonia Mundi have ranged from Couperin and Rameau to Kodaly and Ravel, it’s tempting to think of Alexandre Tharaud as a Chopin pianist, so regularly has the Frenchman returned to the music of the quintessential composer for his instrument. His new CD of the Opus 28 Preludes, that seminal work in which all of Chopin is on display, has caused a considerable stir…..”

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud.    (Source:Courtesy Harmonia Mundi)

Though Tharaud’s interpretations of the extraordinary miniatures are nothing if not individual, the extent to which they hew to the contemporary French inclination toward rowdy, big-boned, take-no-prisoners Chopin comes almost as a surprise. What gives them such high definition is Tharaud’s conviction, spelled out in the disc’s fascinating accompanying notes, that these extraordinarily familiar, listener-friendly pieces are “shot through with violence and death,” mortality-obsessed works conceived during the composer’s trip to Majorca in a futile attempt to deal with his tuberculosis.

So from the agitated arpeggiations of the first, C Major prelude until the railing defiance of the last, in D minor, darkness prevails. Even in the lacey textures of the vivace G Major, there’s a sense of febrile looking over the shoulder. It’s not a view of the work I’d want for everyday, but its integrity is beyond question…..

Chopin on the Web:

Buenos Aires Celebrates the Great Composer Chopin

By Gwen E. Kirby

From the “Online Guidebook to Argentina,” information on Festival Chopiniana 2008:

Chopiniana 2008 is a major classical music festival organized by the Fundación Chopiniana de Buenos Aires to recognize the works of that famous composer, Frederic Chopin. Chopin, born in Poland, composed in the 19^th century is known throughout the world as a famous Romantic. He wrote pieces primarily for the piano, and the piano will be the focus of the festival. According to My Buenos Aires Travel Guide, the festival consists of eight recitals in total, each happening on Wednesday night at 8, from August until October. Tonight will be the first of these recitals at the Teatro Santa Maria. The festival is supported by several embassies, including the Polish embassy, and tickets can be purchased for 30 pesos from the theater itself.

Argentina’s Travel Guide – http://argentinastravel.com

]]> http://www.chopinproject.com/2008/08/28/the-chopin-currency-august-28th-2008/feed/ 0 http://www.chopinproject.com/2008/08/27/the-chopin-currency-august-27th-2008/ http://www.chopinproject.com/2008/08/27/the-chopin-currency-august-27th-2008/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:04:31 +0000 bkr http://chopinproject.com/?p=591 Chopin in the Gaming World:

MOVIE: Eternal Sonata (aka Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream) (PS3)

Strategy Informer RSS News Feed – http://www.strategyinformer.com

The Chopin-inspired video game Eternal Sonata gets its own movie trailer in Japan (we think)…

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Fryderyk Chopin

By BondBloke

Bondwoman and I have…

Chopin in the Gaming World:

MOVIE: Eternal Sonata (aka Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream) (PS3)

Strategy Informer RSS News Feed – http://www.strategyinformer.com

The Chopin-inspired video game Eternal Sonata gets its own movie trailer in Japan (we think)…

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Fryderyk Chopin

By BondBloke

Bondwoman and I have a friend of Polish extraction who walked with us part of the way to the Dean Gallery on Sunday and who was overjoyed when his attention was drawn to this plaque…

Edinburgh Day by Day – http://edinburghdaybyday.wordpress.com

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“It is rarely played.  Its absolute simplicity of texture may lead performers to experiment with ornamentation, but I believe that it is an expression of Chopin’s new direction, in the difficult few years at the end of his life, towards a directness and purity of expression.  The Polonaise-Fantasy has somewhat the same mood, although it is much more elaborate.  The little nocturne is a tragic whisper.”

Chopin Biographer Arthur Hedley once wrote: “From the great Italian singers of the age [Chopin] learned the art of ’singing’ on the piano, and his nocturnes reveal the perfection of his cantabile style and delicate charm of ornamentation.”

Recent scholarship by some musicologists hear the song of a sorrowful Venetian gondolier (borrowed from Italian opera composer Giaocchino Rossini, whom Chopin greatly admired) in the undulating Nocturne in C minor, the 21st and final essay in the genre that Chopin perfected. It dates from 1847, just two years before Chopin’s death, but was not published until decades later.

• Listen to Nocturne in C Minor, KK 1233-5 by Fryderyk Chopin
  performed by Arthur Greene recorded live at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall
• Download sheetmusic for Nocturne in C Minor, KK 1233-5 by Fryderyk Chopin

Bank commercial angers political party

Thenews.pl – Warsaw,Poland

Thin skin in Polish politics, and Chopin supplies the soundtrack…

Opposition politicians are outraged at a TV commercial, complaining that a bank manager character is clearly an attack on President Lech Kaczynski.

The politicians from the Law and Justice party think that well-known actor Marek Kondrat was parodying President Lech Kaczynski in a spoof address to the nation. Although the commercial for a leading bank appeared on television only last weekend, it is already hugely popular on the internet.

The commercial shows the actor delivering an address to the nation, accompanied by music by Fryderyk Chopin and with patriotic flags in the background.

Many see it as a spoof of the president’s address to the nation, which caused some controversy in March.

“Fellow countrymen: everything is better. And it’s going to be even better… than it is. The European Union already feels our hot breath on its affluent back. Our food has already outdistanced their food. For example…our sausage… The time has come to say: let’s enrich ourselves,” says actor Kondrat in the commercial.

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(On the subject of Polish Bank Commercials: Check out this John Cleese Video:)

John Cleese – Polish Bank Commercial (sorry, no Chopin)

Free sheet music from Mutopia Project

WalletPop – VA,USA

The MuTopia Project comes to the attention of a US blogger:

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Martha Argerich: The Collection 1

Musical Criticism – London,UK

High words of praise for a remastered and reissued series of Martha Argerich’s original sides for DG – presented in chronological order, dating back to her 1961 debut recording.   The early Argerich is heavily Chopin-centric, to telling effect….

In Argerich’s debut recording…we have what amounts to a manifesto of her astonishing brand of piano playing. A scintillating version of Chopin’s Third Scherzo – have its defining double octaves ever sounded so effortless at such an exacting pace? – is followed by Argerich’s big-boned and passionate Brahms (the two Rhapsodies Op.79). There’s more Chopin in the Barcarolle Op.60, which, along with Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, shows her ability to coax an array of colours from the piano. A furious Prokoviev Toccata and a Liszt finale – the Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody – give a further demonstration of a technique of such thoroughbred robustness that no music seems to hold any fears for it. Restored here is also the original LP cover – it was replaced in 1967 by the better known black and white photo used for the Originals reissue as well as the cover of this box – which helps to remind us just quite how prodigious the young Argerich was (she was only nineteen at the time of the recording).

Although all the recordings here are all well known it’s fascinating to have this opportunity to relive the releases one by one, placing them in the context of Argerich’s far from conventional career. It was not until six years after her debut that her next solo recording – an all Chopin affair – was released. EMI recorded a recital with Argerich in 1965, the year of her triumph at the Warsaw Chopin Competition, but legal reasons prevented this from being released until relatively recently (1999). Common ground between the EMI recording and the next disc in this set, recorded for DG in 1967, comes in the significant form of the Third Sonata, the ‘Heroic’ Polonaise Op.53 and three Mazurkas Op.59. For DG Argerich also included the Polonaise-Fantasie Op.61. Here some of the excessive forcefulness that some have criticised in Argerich’s playing is apparent, most noticeably in the sonata’s opening movement. Jed Distler, who provides brief introductions to all the recordings, writes ‘how Chopin would have reacted to Argerich taking the B minor Sonata first movement’s Allegro maestoso as a veritable Allegro con fuoco is anyone’s guess’ and the effect is an inevitable reduction in the movement’s great lyricism. But by the time we get to the blistering account of the finale, it’s difficult not to have been won over by the sheer force of Argerich’s interpretation.

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Pianist Wang enjoys unpredictable schedule

Schenectady Gazette – Schenectady,NY,USA

When your star pianist (including Martha Argerich!) cancels, who ya gonna call? 21-year old Joyce Yang, it turns out.  And she owes it all to Chopin…

Wang’s maturity as a performer is as much a surprise to her as it is to the many audiences and critics she impresses, she said. Until she was 10, she’d never heard a recording of classical music. Her first CD was of Maurizio Pollini playing Chopin Etudes.

“I had no music in my head. I had no imagination until I came here,” she said.

People at home in China called her a prodigy, but her teachers were always very critical and made sure she had a good technical foundation. That impressed Gary Graffman, who, in 2002, took her on as one of his students at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

She graduated this June, which was almost a non-event for her, she said. In the past two years she has barely been at the school because she’s been out giving up to 100 concerts a year. Now, she has to decide where she wants to live or if she wants to live in North America, she said.

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Learn to play Funeral March by Frederic Chopin

http://www.songpond.com/songs/funeral-march

From a new site called Songpond (”where you learn to play your favorite songs”), they invite you to subscribe and learn to play a Chopin favorite via an instructional video:

Learn this Classical song that has become an anthem in pop culture for death and funerals. It was adapted to appear as Darth Vaders theme in the Star Wars film. Learn this classical piece with step by step easy to follow video lessons. Techniques you will learn and apply in this lesson include: identifying thematic sections, block chords, two note chords, repetition, transposing up the octave, tertial harmony, the minor key, 2 finger over thumb, dynamic contrast. This lesson is most suitable for a Beginner pianist. It is rated Easy. Running time: 19.04 minutes.

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Chopin on Performing

By J.C. Combs
Amaranth Arthouse Music – http://jamescombs.wordpress.com

Nice and timely quote from Chopin….

Today, as was yesterday, pianist composers are expected to perform. Similarly, I suspect there is more money in performing. Yet one king in the history of the piano wasn’t too confident about performing. Preferring small parlors. intimate settings, Chopin did not at all match in performing personality the pianists who champion his works.

“I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel…” – Chopin

Another Round of Nielsen and a Hunt Lieberson Encore

New York Times – United States

A roundup of reviews by Times music critics includes a glowing account of pianist Alexander Tharaud’s unique and dynamic reading of the 28 Preludes by Chopin: ‘At times Mr. Tharaud treats the Preludes as a Chopinesque “Pictures at an Exhibition.”’  

CHOPIN’S Preludes are not typically thought of as forceful, insistent and assertive these days, and if you are put off by the notion of a performance that grabs you by the lapels and won’t let you go until it has had its say, then Alexandre Tharaud’s recording is not for you.

Mr. Tharaud’s performance argues that only a live-wire interpretation, with hard-struck chords and tactile textures, reaches the music’s core. He is remarkably persuasive, even if you feel he has gone too far when he describes the Preludes, in a booklet interview, as “shot through with violence and death.” His view is not far from that of Schumann, who called the Opus 28 Preludes “eagles’ pinions, wild and motley pell-mell,” that contain “much that is sick, feverish, repellent.”

Still, Mr. Tharaud is clearly not out to recreate a 19th-century Chopin style. He is too inventive and idiosyncratic a performer for that. Some of the faster works — the short G major Prelude, for example — are played at a daunting clip but with jackhammer clarity. Even the slow, regal pieces have stormy, portentous undercurrents.

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Martha Argerich: The Stuff of Legend

New York Times – United States

Provocative contrarian view of Martha Argerich DVD (discussed in an earlier posting)  that cites the loss of a legendary Chopin interpreter as having a profound impact on Argerich’s career..pointed out  in a letter to the New York Times editor…

The best example of this is the assumption that the beloved and super-talented Martha Argerich (whom I met in Brussels 44 years ago, a year before she won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw) could ever be classified as shy.

I remember Ms. Argerich as quite aggressive, absolutely fearless and eager to be on the stage. Quite a logical attitude for a pianist with extraordinary technical equipment. If Ms. Argerich refuses to play recitals, her memory and still outstanding dexterity aren’t the reasons. It is the lack of an interpretative guru, like the Polish pianist Stefan Askenase (who died in 1985), a powerful force in remolding her while in her mid-20s.

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Close-up: Gabriela Montero

Independent – London,England,UK

Speaking of Martha Argerich…her name pops up again in this dispatch about South American pianist Gabriela Montero, making her debut at the Edinburgh Festival: 

She’s been playing piano since before she could talk and made her debut with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra aged eight. She can play “La Cucuracha” in the style of a Chopin Polonaise, Beethoven’s Fifth as a Piazzolla tango. But it wasn’t until a late-night conversation with the Argentine pianist Martha Argerich in 2001 that Gabriela Montero felt she could improvise on stage “without feeling I was doing something wrong”.

At 18, Montero considered a career in psychology before taking a place at the Royal Academy of Music, London. When she met Argerich, she had all but given up again, despite winning the Bronze Medal in the 1995 Chopin Competition.

Now 38 and based in Massachusetts, the Venezuelan is at last “very much at peace”. With a series of EMI discs, and an international concert schedule, she is on a roll, playing programmes in which one half is core classical and the other improvised. “The first half I get into who Chopin was, who Schumann was,” she says,”while the second half is really my world. I have no plan, no road-map.”

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FROM LEARNING TO KNOWING

Calcutta Telegraph – Calcutta,India

A very different kind of recital review from Calcutta, that connects Chopin with ’70s crooner Morris Albert: “When singing in public from little slips of paper has become de rigueur with the Tagorean orthodoxy in Calcutta, it was most reassuring to hear 20-year-old Gaurab Dutta perform with increasing aplomb a long and devilishly difficult programme of Classical and Romantic music for the piano entirely from memory. This was Dutta’s debut concert as part of the Monsoon Concert Series at the Calcutta School of Music on July 19…”

After the interval, Dutta played Schubert’s Sonata in A minor, beautifully interpreting the exquisite melancholy of its Allegretto quasi andantino. He then played one of Moritz Moskowski’s Études de Virtuosité, which was the cleverest way of preparing himself for the profoundly meditative Nocturne in E minor and a rousing Valse Brillante, also in E minor, both by Chopin. For the encore, he played, with a sort of inspired audaciousness, an arrangement of Morris Albert’s mid-Seventies popular song, Feelings, managing to make it sound like something Chopin had composed in his early teens. There is a difference between ‘learning’ a piece of music and ‘knowing’ it — a difference that a sensitive listener would pick up at once. Everything that Dutta played that evening with such impressive technical daring was impeccably learnt and committed to memory. But the first Scarlatti, the Schubert Andantino, the Chopin Nocturne and, oddly enough, Feelings at the end sounded like music that he has come to know deeply, and has begun to make his own

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The Good Daughter

New York Times – United States

New York Times magazine Q & A with author Amy Tan, prompted by her first foray into opera — Tan wrote wrote the libretto for “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” which will have its premiere at the San Francisco Opera next month and is based upon Tan’s novel of the same name.    Tan notes in the Q & A that her mother “wanted me to be a concert pianist, and that would be on weekends.  My day job would be a brain surgeon.”

Why do you play the tambourine instead of the piano after all your years of lessons? Chopin is not what you play when you’re in a rock band.

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Dutoit muscles perfection in stunning opening night

The Saratogian – Saratoga,NY,USA

Review No. 3 of the Philadelphia Orchestra/Charles Dutoit/Emanuel Ax in Saratoga Springs….

Soloist for Wednesday’s program was the stellar pianist Emanuel Ax, stepping in on a few days’ notice to substitute for scheduled guest André Watts. Ax played Chopin’s Concerto No. 2, rather than the programmed Grieg Concerto, and his choice reflected both his experience (he has recorded much of Chopin’s works) and his heritage.

Ax was born in Poland, and Chopin is an enduring and beloved symbol of that often war-torn country’s culture.

Ax handled Chopin’s music on this night as if it was a new discovery. His statement of the slow, second movement’s lyric message was fresh and alive with romance, appropriate to a piece written when the composer was barely 20.

Soft-edged and self-effacing, Ax lets his hands speak for his heart and head. In the few moments of this work that the piano had rests, Ax beat the rhythm into the air by his side as the orchestra played.

The fast third movement of the concerto is filled with handfuls of slippery passages, and Ax skated right through them while still keeping each note distinct. The music sparkled and sang.

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Recordings show the strengths and weaknesses of Kissin

Fresno Bee (subscription) – Fresno,CA,USA

Reissue on Brilliant Classics of Evgeny Kissin’s early Russian recordings get mixed reviews, but his Chopin concertos earn top marks:

Evgeny Kissin, “The Early Recordings: Mozart Piano Concertos Nos. 12 and 20, Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3, Schubert’s ‘Trout Quintet’ plus works by Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Scriabin, Liszt and Brahms” (Brilliant Classics) Grade: B

In Concert: “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, Chopin Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 plus works by Liszt and Schumann” (Brilliant Classics) Grade: A )

The first volume, titled “The Early Recordings,” is the most collectible since it contains some of Kissin’s least-circulated concerto recordings. And though the performances are well-played and judiciously interpreted, they do make you wonder if his child-prodigy years were overrated. The “In Concert” set from 1987 gives the opposite impression, lending credence to piano pundits who claim Kissin never was greater than in those early years.

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Chopin on the Web:

Chopin Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:01:14 PST
By chopin@perfectpeople.net (Chopin)

A new “celebrity site” called Perfect People gives the celeb treatment to Our Man Chopin…

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2

By charliend
Charlie Media Blog – http://charlie-blog.com/media

This just in: “Chopin is definitely a legend in the field of classical music.”

But suddenly, I remembered one music that my mother used to play at home, usually on sunday evening. Because of that, I really like this song, it transpose me in the past. Chopin is definetely a legend in the field of classical music.

Triumphal return for Philadelphians

Albany Times Union – Albany,NY,USA

The Philadelphia Orchestra launches its 43rd summer season in Saratoga Springs.   Bravos for the Beethoven, but the orchestra’s reading of a Chopin concerto with Emanuel Ax is in need of some Posturpedic treatment…

Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21 featured soloist Emanuel Ax, whose pearly tone and always elegant touch can show off the composer’s solo repertoire to wondrous effect. But with Chopin’s billowy soft orchestration, it was just too much cushy comfort. One needs some firm back support as well as a soft place to rest the head.

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Philadelphia Orchestra puts on a terrific show in debut

Schenectady Gazette – Schenectady,NY,USA

Same concert by Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra; different takeaway from the Schenectady paper…

Ax was a superb interpreter of the Chopin. His fluid streams of notes were flawless and he gave the phrases much room to breath.

His dynamics were especially delicate and he didn’t hesitate to be forceful when the music called for it.

That energy lent a vigorous quality, which was a nice balance to the filagree.

In the slow second movement, Ax etched the sublime melody like the craftsman he is.

There was much delicacy in his very finished phrases.

The final movement was virtuosic, speedy and very charming in its sometime use of dance styles, such as the mazurka.

Throughout, Dutoit was the perfect partner.

The orchestra knew how to keep its balances and yet provided exuberant support when called for.

Ax was very pleased with the result as was the crowd, which gave everyone a standing ovation, long applause and several curtain calls.

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Lang Lang keys up Olympic gig

Variety – Los Angeles,CA,USA

Expect to see lots of stories on this subject in coming days…

Lang, who records for Deutsche Grammophon, has famously been filmed playing Chopin using an orange. With daring references to kung fu and videogames peppering his discussions of the great composers, Lang has made classical music accessible to many in China, which has some 30 million piano students.

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Fliter approaches piano with a bit of an attitude

Chicago Sun-Times – United States

Review of Ravinia Festival debut of Gilmore Prize-winning pianist Ingrid Fliter.   Her Chopin didn’t come until the very end of the program…

For a trio of encores, she trotted out a stormy little dance from countryman Alberto Ginastera, Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz and the Grande Valse Brillante in E Flat, Op. 18. Given she was a silver medalist in the elite 2000 Chopin competition in Warsaw, Poland, Fliter left the crowd craving a mazurka or two, or one of the other less traveled waltzes.

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Alec Baldwin on ‘30 Rock,’ classical music and getting out of acting

Los Angeles Times  – Los Angeles,CA,USA

Who knew what really moves the “30 Rock” actor on his way to pick up another Emmy Nomination??

Sitting in the room, Baldwin discovered the photographer’s computer. He played Chopin through iTunes. “A man turns 50 and he has a funeral for the skills that he never had,” he said. Baldwin just had that birthday in April. “He says goodbye. I’m never gonna be a cop, never gonna be a professional baseball player, never going to play the piano, a ballet dancer, the leading rusher in the NFL. All those things gone. But! There’s other things to do. The world is run by men in their 50s. So I’m trying to decide what to do when I quit this business.”

Politics, perhaps? “What would I run for?” he asked. He has a smart squint when he asks questions. Comptroller? He barked his loud laugh. “Yeah, I do have to find another career,” he said. “I don’t want to do this. . . . I don’t.”

IT’S NOT that he’s unhappy with “30 Rock” necessarily. Maybe he’s just feeling that 50-year-old’s itch to start something new. Then again, as he fusses over the computer, it could just be the uttering of a capricious thought.

He found the browser and went to ArkivMusic.com. “I love this. Isn’t this great? Couldn’t you just sit and do this all day? I’m looking for ‘Ultimate Chopin.’ What could be more worthy than that? Ah! The complete collection of Rachmaninoff. Complete recordings!” His face darkened and a little swearing ensued. “This is Dutoit with the Montreal! What is the problem? You lying . . . ! Ultimate collection. Well, we don’t see Ashkenazy.” This went on for a while then a phone rang. “Can’t you see I’m listening to Chopin?” he said, in a put-on accent. “I can’t be bothered with this. . . .”

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The music the BBC banned

Times Online – UK

Now it can be told: Entertaining story about the Beeb’s pop-music-censorship history reveals some unlikely heroes…and villians!

……One barbarian at the gates was Perry Como: I’m Always Chasing Rainbows was his rendition of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu in C sharp minor. “This is a bad perversion of a Chopin melody and should be barred,” the BBC snarled, and, even in 1963, they stopped Ken Dodd’s cover version from being broadcast. The reason for this was the place on the committee of the conductor Sir Arthur Bliss. His wrath was incurred by such unlikely revolutionaries as Liberace and Mantovani, and the score of Kismet, borrowed from Borodin, which meant that MOR standards such as Stranger in Paradise and Baubles, Bangles and Beads were rarely heard.

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We can but should we?

Chronicle Times – Cherokee,IA,USA

Iowa newspaper weighs in on “the eternal battle of wills between science and ethics” being played out in Poland over Chopin’s heart, to determine if (as is now conjectured), he died from cystic fibrosis, and not tuberculosis…

Government officials are denying access to the heart, which has taken on a mystic similar to a religious relic. They feel that the scientists may not even be able to prove their theory and see little value in what caused the composer’s death.

Scientists respond that if Chopin died from cystic fibrosis, the knowledge would give hope to those suffering from the disease that they have the capacity to achieve great things, in spite of their disease.

We agree with the government. Changing the cause of death will not change the way Chopin is viewed, nor will defiling a revered relic help anyone.

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Italians to design Warsaw’s Chopin Museum

Polish Radio External Service – Poland

Listen to the Audio report from Polish Radio: New Chopin Museum

“In 2010, the Chopin birth bicentenary year, Warsaw is to have a new-look Chopin Museum. An international competition for its design and exhibition concept has been won by the Milan-based Migliore & Servetto company.”

Grzegorz Michalski, the director of the National Chopin Institute, says it was an excellent choice: ‘The Italian concept is renowned for its incredible artistic taste and a feel for the specific conditions of the Ostrogski Castle on the one hand and of the needs of a monographic exhibition devoted to Chopin. I am delighted with a clarity of vision and the logic of the structural design.’

The winning project does away with the traditional ‘don’t touch the exhibits’ way of design. It is to be a multi-media and interactive arrangement, making profound use of all the latest in electronic technology.

‘While being a truly modern museum, it is addressed not only to the lovers of Chopin but to people of various level of interest in music and of all age groups, both 70- and 10-year olds. They will be able to view different exhibits, the ones they are interested in, at the same time; it’s a very interesting concept,’ said the minister of culture Bogdan Zdrojewski

Italians to design Warsaw’s Chopin Museum

Thenews.pl – Warsaw,Poland

More on the firm designing the new museum, and their 50K Euro prize, offered by the
by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute (NIFC).

The Milan-based Migliore&Servetto company has won a tender for the design of the Chopin Museum in Warsaw. An 11-person panel of judges, chaired by the …
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

El Paso Chopin Music Festival

By admin4

Mark your calendars for the 14th season of the El Paso gathering, says the tourism blog Travel To United States:

The 2008 fall series of piano concerts is sponsored by El Paso Community College and the El Paso Chopin Festival Society. Performances are at 8 pm Saturday, Sept. 6, Sept. 20 and Oct. 4. at the Chamizal National Memorial, 800 S. …
Travel to United States of America – http://traveltounitedstates.lakho.com

Poland Rejects Testing Chopin’s Heart

By admin

Scientists want to see if composer Frederic Chopin — whose heart rests in a Warsaw church, preserved in alcohol since his 1849 death — died of cystic fibrosis instead of tuberculosis, as was thought at the time. …

Current World News – http://actualdot.com

Lang Lang: Virtuoso pianist or ‘flashy’ showman?

Independent – London,England,UK

A preview of the celebrity and controversy surrounding Lang Lang, as he prepares to perform at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Tiannenmen Square on Friday  UK daily reveals the early career-molding Chopin influence on the world’s most recognizable Chinese pianist…

He played the complete Chopin études at 13, and won the Tchaikovsky junior competition in Japan with Chopin’s E minor concerto. That work has always meant a lot to him, he says, “though at 13 I was too young to understand the pathos of Chopin’s love for that girl, which she didn’t return. My father told me not to think about the emotional situation, just to think about a beautiful landscape – and about my mother! That worked very well.” Chopin chimes perfectly with what he now describes as his crusade: he’s always trying to reach young audiences, “and Chopin is the perfect composer for that. His music is so universal that even people who don’t like classical music like it.”

Poland Rejects Testing Chopin’s Heart

By admin

From the Current World News blog, Polish officials say “Nevermore!” to the idea of exhuming Chopin’s heart for testing…

Scientists want to see if composer Frederic Chopin — whose heart rests in a Warsaw church, preserved in alcohol since his 1849 death — died of cystic fibrosis instead of tuberculosis, as was thought at the time. But Poland thinks this is no excuse to disturb one of its key relics. “The heart lies in a jar sealed inside a pillar at Warsaw’s Holy Cross Church _ and the only time it has been removed was for safekeeping during World War II.

Before it was returned in 1951, a doctor examined the heart and found it perfectly preserved in an alcohol that many think is cognac. Chopin died in France, where his body is buried, but he asked that his heart be sent to his homeland.

PCH: Positively Chopin Highway

By Sundroid(Sundroid)

Sun, fun, and Chopin…

Chopin music in Duszniki spa

Polish Radio External Service – Poland

News of the opening of the International Chopin Piano Festival in the Polish spa town of Duszniki, tucked in the southwestern corner of the country.   The Festival opens with a performance by the piano duo of Brigitte Engerer of France and Boris Berezovsky of Russia….

The program of the ten-day event includes recitals and concerts by such prominent pianists as Nicolai Demidenko, Alexander Gavrilyuk, Krzysztof Jabłoński and Arcadi Volodos, as well as the violinist Konstanty Kulka, the cellist Tomasz Strahl and the singer Jadwiga Rappe.

The Festival in Duszniki is the oldest music festival in Poland. Launched in 1946 and it has been held every year since. It commemorates Chopin’s stay in the spa in 1826. The composer was 16 years old when he came to Duszniki for treatment and gave two benefit concerts.

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‘Aw, c’mon, have a heart!’

Fort Scott Tribune – Fort Scott,KS,USA

Kansas columnist not impressed by scientific clamor to exhume Chopin’s heart…

That’s how the scientists who would — in the manner of Indiana Jones — rip Chopin’s heart out of the Warsaw pillar, perform their DNA tests, and then, of course, write a scholarly paper on the experiment that they can deliver at a medical convention, in Chicago — appear unflatteringly.

You want a body on which to experiment? Dig up Joseph Stalin, Nicolai Lenin, Francisco Franco, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra. Be careful whom you dig up. Some of the dead mean a lot to us, the still-living.

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Marc-André Hamelin delivers program proudly and tirelessly

The Gazette (Montreal) – Quebec,Canada

Marc-André Hamelin – “a pianist of icy composure,” refuses to melt even during a warm and humid night at the Lanaudière Festival in Quebec….

Chopin’s B-minor Sonata accommodated the hard-nosed treatment less comfortably, though perhaps that’s because we’re so accustomed to hearing Chopin played all gushy. This particular sonata was written at a desperate time in the composer’s life, and needs compassion as well as fervour; Hamelin was unforgiving, but not entirely cold, and as such the last movement’s funeral march became all the more chilling.

In terms of sheer virtuosity, it was the Alkan that was really mind-boggling. The Concerto for Solo Piano, Op. 39, has an excessive number of notes to it, and most pianists would never bother learning – let alone memorizing – such a huge score for its relatively few moments of interest. But Hamelin has championed this music, lovingly searched out its redeeming features and, on Tuesday, delivered it proudly and tirelessly.

And even after Alkan’s crashing finale Hamelin continued, responding to the audience’s frenzied applause by mopping his brow and sitting down to an encore, Chopin’s D-flat Major Nocturne, to graciously send us home soothed. It was a thoughtful finish to an extremely impressive recital.

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Chopin in the BlogoChocosphere:

Frédéric Chopin Dark Chocolate

By Mike(Mike)

Filberts and Chocolate – http://filbertsandchocolate.blogspot.com/

From Mike in Missassauga, Ontario, the author of the “Filberts and Chocolates” blog…

Frédéric Chopin is regarded as Poland’s finest composer, whether this chocolate bar from Jutrzenka SA in Poland is the finest chocolate of that country is debatable, as is whether it is a fine tribute to Chopin.

How does it taste? How does it compare to the music of Chopin? Not really a fair comparison, but this is not a great bar, just an average good bar that might serve to satisfy a craving. It’s not a bar I would buy again; as to the music of Chopin, that I would listen to.…

How did Chopin die? It matters
The popular image is of Chopin as a frail consumptive – we should be given the chance to find out whether this is true.
Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog – music – http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/

An thought-provoking column by the Guardian’s music critic, who argues that Chopin’s heart is worth a scientific investigation.   Worth a read.

…..It’s all about his heart: after his death in Paris in 1849 (he left Warsaw in 1830, never to return, thanks to political and social upheaval), the composer’s will stipulated that his heart should be returned to Warsaw. His sister, Ludwika, came back to Poland, with Chopin’s most vital organ pickled in a jar of cognac. This ghoulish cocktail was buried in one of the pillars of the Holy Cross Church, in Warsaw’s old town – the first on the left as you go in to the church’s rather austere interior, in fact, and it’s marked with a plaque, and a mandatory group of tourists having their photo taken; at least it was when I was there earlier this year.

The Polish government is refusing to allow this holy of holies of Polish music to be removed from its resting place (usually, to say of a composer that their heart is in their homeland would be no more than metaphorical whimsy; with Chopin, it’s literally true). However, the scientists are trying to prove something genuinely important: this isn’t the same as trying to find out if a lock of hair really was Beethoven’s or Brahms’s, or if some random 18th-century skull actually did house Mozart’s grey matter. What they want to do is to take a sample of the heart to show that Chopin suffered from cystic fibrosis. His symptoms – his physical frailty, his difficulty breathing, and periods of exhaustion – have always been assumed to be down to tuberculosis. But if it was the genetically acquired cystic fibrosis instead, then we’d have to rethink the notion of Chopin dying from the Romantics’ favourite disease, consumption….

There’s more. Virtually the entire reception history of Chopin, his music and his biography, is seen through the frame of his supposed physical weakness, whether it’s the image of him as effete saloniste, or a performance practice that has stressed the lyrical intimacy of his works rather than their structural integrity…..But his music, instead of merely reflecting his sickliness or the way he succumbed to his physical frailty, is heroic: not just in the way he created a whole new approach to playing and composing for the piano, but also because his creativity transcended the hardships of his life.

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Pianist Gabriela Montero revives the art of improvisation

Times Online – UK

On the eve of her Edinburgh Festival debut, a fascinating story on a fascinating personality: “Making it up as you go along might work well in the worlds of experimental theatre, freeform jazz, or when you’re caught pilfering biros, but in the world of classical music improvising went the way of Beethoven at around the same time Beethoven went. Chopin dabbled, Liszt doodled, but now, even if ornamentation is cherished in Baroque performance or toyed with in cadenzas, most soloists prefer the security of jotting down a few bars before they put a shoe on stage. Not so Gabriela Montero, the 38-year-old Venezuelan concert pianist who is reviving this neglected art…”

Resuming two years later, she won the Bronze Medal at the 1995 International Chopin Piano competition, but it was only after a tipsy pub improvisation for the legendary pianist – and now her mentor – Martha Argerich in 2002 that Montero regained her musical spirit.

In Essen’s woody concert hall it is obvious that this “spirit” is what has drawn her audience. Montero tosses out frenetic Chopin and Liszt, but the atmosphere livens when, glass of wine in hand, she banters with a group of flag-waving Venezuelans calling for improvisations amid a sea of sedately rowdy Germans. Requests for Elvis and the Pink Panther follow until someone finally responds to Montero’s plea for “a tune from Essen” with a hearty mining song, which Montero elevates into a slow, touching eulogy.

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