Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, no. 1 “L’Adieu”
Performance Today – American Public Media

Today’s edition of Performance Today – the most popular classical-music show in the USA – will feature a performance from The Chopin Project: Chih-Long Hu’s live interpretation of Chopin’s Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, no. 1 “L’Adieu”

Produced and distributed by American Public Media, Performance Today is broadcast on 245 public radio stations across the country and is heard by about 1.1 million people each week. Each station individually decides what time to air the program. To find out where and when to hear Performance Today, check out publicradiofan, an independent website that is an excellent guide to online streaming of US public radio stations. You’ll also be able to hear the show on the Performance Today website for up to seven days after the broadcast.

Chopin News, Views, and Reviews:

Rudolf Firkusny, piano = SCHUBERT: Three Pieces, D. 946; MARTINU …
Audiophile Audition – USA

Review of a BBC Legends CD featuring the renowned Czech pianist in a 1980 London recital at Queen Elizabeth Hall: “If Firkusny wanted to be Vladimir Horowitz, he could be.”

The Chopin and Smetana offerings play as encores. The Op. 63 Mazurka is the pearl of the set of three–what Cortot called an exquisite, aristocratic dream–Firkusny’s touch is a mite pesant, but the natural lilt and grace of the shifting accents retain their innate, mesmeric charm.

See all stories on this topic

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

A Souvenir From Vladimir Horowitz
New York Sun – United States

A just-released “souvenir” CD from “one of the great uneven performers in all history” Vladimir Horowitz’s very last recital (from June of 1987) hits its highest points with Chopin: “The event took place in Hamburg, allowing the record label, Deutsche Grammophon, to call the album “Horowitz in Hamburg.” A little alliteration is always appreciated.”

We then have a Chopin mazurka, the one in B minor, Op. 33, No. 4 — and Horowitz plays it with perfect rhythmic sense. The bend and snap of that thing are amazing. He plays it very purely, too, with complete refinement.

In this piece — on this track — Horowitz is in total control of his fingers. There is no old-man faltering.

He ends the printed program with Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise — so often associated with Rubinstein, but played for decades by Horowitz, too.

Does Horowitz have enough technique — in 1987 — to get through it? Yes. And he summons up plenty of charisma. Or rather, he doesn’t summon it up: It simply flows from him, naturally.

See all stories on this topic

Discovering Poland’s heritage at St James Cavalier
Malta Independent Online – Malta

If there’s Polish culture on display in Malta, Chopin cannot be far from the picture….

A piano recital by the pianist Pawel Mazurkiewicz from Poland preceded the opening of the exhibition. He performed works by Bach, Chopin, Scriabin, Grieg, Gershwin and Debussy.

Prizewinner of the prestigious Swiss music prize, Prix Credit Suisse – Jeunes Solistes 2003, Pawel Mazurkiewicz was born in Warsaw and graduated with distinction from the Frederic Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw in 2000. In 2004 he graduated also with distinction and with Eduard Tschumi Music Prize from the University of Arts in Bern. He is currently assistant professor of the Piano class at the University of Arts in Bern, Switzerland. He has started composing, arranging and performing jazz music as an addition to his classical repertoire…
See all stories on this topic

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

My favourite Chopin recordings
By Stephanie Delacey

A nice post that’s both entertaining, and well-researched, with audio to boot: “Here are my top ten Chopin recordings (all, interestingly enough, historical recordings made more than fifty years ago…):” In the Top 10: Dinu Lipatti, Solomon, Alfred Cortot, and even Percy Grainger…

…
Stephanie’s Pillowbook – http://pillowbook.co.uk

Flying bison and half a cup of coffee

Three out of four stars in this review in the UK Spectator of Michael Moran’s much-discussed new book A Country in the Moon: Travels in the Heart of Poland.

The author’s uncle was a concert pianist who harboured a passion for Chopin. He extracted a deathbed promise from his nephew to ‘visit those places Chopin frequented as a young man . . . to better understand the patriotic roots of Chopin’s music’ and implored him ‘to scatter his ashes over the Mazovia plain near Chopin’s birthplace’. This was the genesis of the author’s engagement with Poland. [...]

There is so much to admire in this well-researched and hugely entertaining book, and so much to learn. Certainly, I did not know that Poles regard their country as ‘the reincarnation of the suffering Christ’. That Schumann described Chopin’s music as ‘cannons hidden among flowers’. That the national composer of Poland left Poland at the age of 20, never to return. That Polish aristocrats once claimed descent from nomadic archers of Iranian stock related to the Scythians. That under communism, Poles could buy half a cup of coffee if they were too poor to afford a full cup. That many Poles hold that entry into the European Union was ‘the onset of moral decay’.

Spectator – The Magazine – http://www.spectator.co.uk

Chopin Videos:
Alfred Cortot – Great Interpreter of Chopin
By Issykitty

(http://issykitty.videosift.com)

From a new video-sharing site called Videosift: “He looked for the opium in music”

http://vintage.videosift.com/unsifted

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Frédéric Chopin 1810-1849
By Administrator
Great Composers and their Lives… – http://ferrisguitar.com/blog

Blog entry from a guitarist-turned-webucator regarding our man Chopin…

The first concerts that he gave abroad were in Vienna, Austria. He was charmed by life outside his country and eventually ended up leaving Poland for good, settling in France in 1831. His father was originally a Frenchman, hence the name he was given Frédéric Chopin.
(*His name is pronounced by correctly reading the following in English accenting the bold print: fre der eek – shou pa)

In Poland, Chopin’s heart may hold secret of his death AFP -

“Leading Polish medical experts are betting that DNA tests on his heart — perfectly preserved in what appears to be cognac — could prove he suffered from cystic fibrosis.” But will they be successful in opening up to prove it?

Their request to Poland’s culture ministry for tissue samples to check for the CFTR gene marking cystic fibrosis sufferers has, however, sparked mixed feelings over the prospect of picking over a national icon.

There, inside a crystal urn filled with alcohol lies Chopin’s heart, brought home in 1849 — as he had wished — by his elder sister Ludwika from Paris, where the rest of his remains lie in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

Leading Polish cystic fibrosis specialist Wojciech Cichy said the symptoms Chopin suffered throughout his life were typical of cystic fibrosis, a genetic illness which clogs the lungs with excess thick and sticky mucus.

“From early childhood he was weak, prone to chest infections, wheezing, coughing,” Cichy said.

Records show that as an adult weighing 40 kilograms (about 88 pounds) at a height of 1.70 metres (five foot seven inches), Chopin was chronically underweight — another telltale symptom of cystic fibrosis.

Cichy also pointed out that despite a passionate romance with flamboyant French writer George Sand, Chopin had no known children, suggesting infertility — another telling clue. And few cystic fibrosis sufferers live past 40.

“If we can prove Chopin suffered from cystic fibrosis, it would be a huge inspiration for our patients, especially children, to know they can accomplish a great deal like he did,” Cichy told AFP.

See all stories on this topic

Promising pianists
The Union of Grass Valley – Grass Valley,CA,USA

Panning for the next generation of gold-medal pianists in an old mining town. Is there any connection between Chopin’s death and the California Gold Rush happening the same year (1849?)

Komendera is a Polish student attending the annual piano workshop offered by the Gold Country Piano Institute, a Nevada City non-profit.

“It’s great,” Komendera said about the workshop. “It’s another culture, another climate, beautiful instruments and great teachers.”

She also likes the charm of historic Nevada City.

For the past nine years, the Piano Institute’s workshop at the Miners Foundry has attracted piano students and instructors from across the globe.

This is Komendera’s second visit to Nevada City. She’s a third-year student at The Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.

A $1,600 full-scholarship from Susan Costello, a patron of the Piano Institute, helped Komendera attend the workshop this year. A music group from Warsaw paid her airplane fare.

See all stories on this topic

Gwilym Simcock: The prodigious pianist reveals the music that gets …
Independent – London,England,UK

27-year-old genre-busting pianist Simcock submits to a free-association session with UK paper: “The New Review has decided to challenge him to take us to the heart of That Simcock Thing: to name, and discuss while listening, six favourite pieces of piano music that have served to shape the multi-talented renaissance musician that he is today.” In the Pick Six Mix: Grieg, John Taylor, (English jazz pianist, not the former Duran Duran bassist) Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Take 6, and our man Chopin….

Chopin: “Fantasie Impromptu”

“A few months ago I got asked to do a concert entirely based on the music of Chopin, and for once I said no, because I didn’t know what to do with the music. It is so complete in itself as piano music. There’s nowhere you can take it. In the past, I’ve worked on Shostakovich and Ravel projects because the elements of the music can be separated – you can remove the harmony or the melody or the ostinato [repeated musical motif] from a piece and do something else with it.

Chopin and Rachmaninov are the guys who wrote completely idiomatically for the instrument. All of Chopin is fantastic. I listened to it in the car when I was little, on a cassette, and before I knew anything about music I loved it. A year or so ago I went somewhere with my parents and I found all these old cassettes of music I used to listen to when I was nine or 10, and we listened to them again. I hear them in a completely different way now… There is beauty in Chopin, but there is also something else. It is profoundly impressive.”

See all stories on this topic

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/

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Joe Jackson @ Bridgewater Hall
Manchester Evening News – Manchester,England,UK

Raves for a live show – and new CD – by the “musically literate former Angry Young Man…: “Rain captures all that singular brew of bile and beauty which drove Jackson’s best work.” – and apparently helps him find his inner Fryderyk…

The centrepiece was the new song Solo (So Low), introduced by its creator as “a bit of a wrist-slasher, but it does have its funny side..or maybe that’s just me”. Yes it is just you, Joe, for what the hushed crowd heard was one of the most striking hymns to loneliness ever sung, Jackson’s grand piano underpinning his bleak poetry with something akin to a Chopin piano study.

See all stories on this topic

Sixteen-year-old Fremont grad goes on to Julliard
Fremont Bulletin – California, United States

Local girl Ashley Hsu is packing her bags for the big city, wich help from the Chopin Foundation…

A talented pianist, Hsu has won multiple awards and scholarships, including a 2006-2007 scholarship from the Chopin Foundation of the United States for her performances of the works of Chopin. She is also the silver medalist in the 2008 Schimmel International Piano Competition where she competed against young artists from China, South Korea, Israel, Canada and other countries.

See all stories on this topic

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Could it be the start of a trend? Playing the Eternal Sonata video game is sparking interest in Chopin’s compositions?

oddly enough playing eternal sonata has got me into Chopin (3)
By ♪ ☆ Anonymous Popstar ☆ ♪
can anyone recommend some more songs from that stand out.

Music @4-ch – http://4-ch.net/music/index.html

What’s the story, morning glory? What’s the word, humming bird?
By Mew(Mew)
As much fun as the battle system was and how freakin’ pretty Chopin is was, the game was…a little lacking. I didn’t feel too attached to the characters, the story seemed a bit rushed, and the plot was a bit boring. …
Mew – http://amewsed.livejournal.com/

Chopin News, Views, and Reviews:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

See all stories on this topic

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Chopin is the Only Ring Tone for You
By Evan

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

Wild.er – http://blog.evanwilder.com

Chopin in the YouTubeoSphere:

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

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

A Comedic Ballet With Legs
Wall Street Journal – USA

WSJ critic marvels at the staying power of Jerome Robbins’ Chopinistic comedic creation….

“Death,” one showbiz quip has it, “is easy; comedy is hard.” However savvy Jerome Robbins might have been in the mid-1950s as a still-budding master of both musical-theater dances and of classical ballet, he could hardly have predicted the staying power of “The Concert,” the comedic ballet he created to Chopin in 1956 and called “A Charade in One Act” and subtitled “The Perils of Everybody.”

Once his hilarious take on would-be concertgoers hit its stride with a 1971 restaging for his home-base company, the New York City Ballet, “The Concert” showed itself to be a deathless ballet comedy. In recent years, over a dozen ballet companies nationally and internationally, including one in Perm, Russia, have eagerly performed the work….

See all stories on this topic

Google Blogs Alert for: chopin

Robbins & Chopin at NYC Ballet
By oberon481

Dance-focused blogger’s taken on the Chopin/Robbins night at the NYC Ballet:

I’m not sure an all-Chopin evening is a great idea; surely the most effective programmes are those that offer musical contrasts. But THE CONCERT was fun tonight with Sterling Hyltin showing a nice flair for comedy (and dancing very well) and several amusing character players including Andrew Veyette’s henpecked, vengeful husband and Gwyneth Muller’s priceless wife with her droll efforts to maintain a sense of decorum.

Oberon’s Grove – http://oberon481.typepad.com/oberons_grove/

Chopin in the Newsgroups:

Kobrins 2005 Chopin Preludes

From the rec.music.classical newsgroup, a discussion on the merits of Alexander Kobrin’s Chopin interpretations…

Sure emphasizes the dark side, but very effective,original conceptions
seemingly not just for effect. He seems to empathize better with this more complex,subtle music than with the more
extroverted, emotional Rachmaninoff Etudes,IMHO. But this is
2005……

newsgroups.derkeiler.com: rec.music.c… – http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.music.classical.recordings

Concert series to present piano recital
Caledon Citizen – Caledon,Ontario,Canada
He will present a recital that will include etudes, preludes and concerti by Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. The concert takes place at St. James …
See all stories on this topic

Remembering Rubinstein
Times Online – UK
And Chopin flowed from his fingers like clear, sweet water. Time was honoured in the music’s heartbeat; yet time also seemed suspended. …
See all stories on this topic

Dutch symphony

Times of India – India
… Steiner on the piano, violin and viola respectively, brought to life compositions of masters like Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms and Scharwenka. …
See all stories on this topic

Overseas Vietnamese pianist play in HCMC
Thanh Nien Daily – Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam
The 21-year-old musician, Van Anh, will play pieces by Mozart and Chopin at the event co-organized by the Australian Consulate-General. …
See all stories on this topic