Posts tagged Chopin
Chopin
Rondo à la Mazur, Op. 5
Daniil Trifonov
Though not that often heard today, the Rondo à la Mazur composed by a sixteen year-old Chopin was one of the pieces through which European audiences of the 1820s came to know the remarkable prodigy from Warsaw. Schumann was charmed by its elegance and folksy color, and here it serves as the perfect vehicle for Trifonov’s preternatural legato.
(Post Nº. 5,000)
Chopin
Étude in A minor, Op. 25 Nº 11
“Winter Wind”
Maurizio Pollini
Definitely à propos for today where I am…
Opening page of the manuscript of Chopin’s lovely but lesser-known Tarantella, Op. 43, dating from 1841. It was almost destroyed in a German bombing raid in 1941, as you can see; several years ago it was sold to the Chopin Institute of Warsaw for $803,000, by Sotheby’s.
Chopin
Nocturne in F-sharp minor, Op. 48, Nº. 2
Artur Rubinstein
This about sums it up for today.
Started working on Chopin Scherzo 4 yesterday. It will take time and diligence, but everything will be squarely manageable except for all those pp thirds near the end. How I will ever get those to sound like anything more graceful than an idling engine without one of its sparkplugs is beyond me.
586 plays
Chopin
Scherzo Nº. 4 in E, Op. 54
Sviatoslav Richter (1977)
“The wonderful Scherzo in E major, composed in 1842 and ‘43, stands alone among its companion works, and in Chopin’s entire output for its mellowness of tone and the deep, Olympian joy it exudes…It is the work’s radiant spirit which places it among Chopin’s most sublime conceptions, although as the best-mannered of the scherzos, it is also the most difficult to get to know.”
- Victor Lederer
(photo by angus clyne)
Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the heart of man.
Chopin
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Chopin
12 Études, Op. 25
Daniil Trifonov, piano
Rubinstein Competition, 2011
Check out the wrist position in Nº. 6 — that’s generally a pedagogical no-no from most teachers, but I can’t even begin to make sense of those runs without getting up high like that. Now if I could just get them to sound that clean…
When I think of Liszt as a creative artist, he appears before my eyes rouged, on stilts, and blowing into Jericho trumpets fortissimo and pianissimo.
Chopin
369 plays
Chopin
Allegro de concert in A, Op. 46
Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano
In September 1841 Chopin wrote to Breitkopf, his publisher in Germany, offering the first movement of a piano concerto arranged for the piano alone. A few months later the work was published by Schlesinger and Breitkopf as well.
It is now generally acknowledged that Chopin’s Allegro de concert is a solo arrangement of the first movement of a third piano concerto which was never completed—no further movements are known to exist, wholly or partially, in any form, but Chopin initially wrote and spoke of the work in these terms, and the piece is certainly structured along the lines of a large opening concerto movement. Indeed, the opening segment clearly evidences the texture of an orchestral reduction.
It is one of his most pianistically demanding works, and in its sharp classical outlines differs substantially from Chopin’s usual style in some respects. For these reasons, as well as its length, it is rarely performed or recorded today. But Chopin thought highly of the music, going so far as to write to Alexander Hoffman that he intended to withhold performing the piece himself until he “returned home to a free Warsaw.”
(Jozef Chelmonski | Matula sa, 1871)
Too real.
Chopin
Nocturne Nº. 3 in B, Op. 9, Nº. 3Artur Rubinstein, piano
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