Showing posts with label Ingrid Fliter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ingrid Fliter. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The Chopin Planet; Alec Baldwin's Inner Chopin; Ingrid Fliter; BBC vs. Perry Como
Click here to find The Chopin Currency for August 6th, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Chopin Currency - May 29th, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
The scared boy who dreamed... and the man who triumphed
Yorkshire Post - Leeds,England,UK
Approving profile of Yorkshire pianist-turned-textile-magnate-turned-arts- developer-turned-philanthropist Sir Ernest Hall, developer of the renowned Dean Clough arts and business complex, upon the publication of his memoir "How to Be a Failure and Succeed." What lies ahead for him conquer? A certain composer...
See all stories on this topic The story of Dean Clough (he retired as chairman this year) will be told in a second book, which he hopes to finish by the end of the year. "But I'm very busy. I've still got the Chopin project," he says, with enthusiasm. It has long been his ambition to record the complete works of Chopin – 14 CDs in all, of which he has so far recorded seven. He plans to complete the project in time for the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, in 1810. "I shall be 80 years old," he says. At 78, he's still reaching, still transcending boundaries. "Dreams of achievement have an amazing power in your life," he says. "You find that you are elevated by ambition itself."
Concerts at the Cadillac: "Piano for the People" by Chris Hess
Beyond Chron - San Francisco,CA,USA
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to visit the Cadillac Hotel, for a concert called "Piano for the People: a Classical Piano Concert for Non-Classical Listeners."
Chris will connect music written from 1840-1960 with the present day Tenderloin to excite and educate a general audience. Chris will play Chopin, Rachmaninoff and other romantic composers, interspersed with personal stories. For example, he will syncopate different rhythms in the right and left hands, show you how, and explain why it builds community.
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MKM Attila ilhan Hall / Ingrid Fliter / 8:00 pm
Turkish Daily News (subscription) - Ankara,Turkey
No day is complete her at the Chopin Currency without an Ingrid Fliter posting, today in advance of an appearance at the Caddebostan Culture Center with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra...
"Chopin's music has been one of the great standards of the classical repertoire for generations, and many audiences have enjoyed hearing it played well; however, and especially in this unique class of the art, there is to be found a rare, untouchable nuance that speaks directly to the heart," as Fliter says, "and it is truly an extremely rare artist who can well demonstrate this treasure." She is in love with her work, and it is her love that gives life to her art, so much appreciated by the public.
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Kapell Rediscovered: The Australian Broadcasts - 2-CD set
Audiophile Audition - USA
Typically thoughtful (if a bit wordy!) review from esteemed online publication that nonetheless pithily summarizes the new-old release from the late William Kapell: "Collectors will listen to it often, in spite of the sonic defects that make some moments almost unbearable...
Kapell always performed Chopin as a strong suit, and I remain fond of the B Minor Sonata and several of his mazurkas, the Op. 50, No. 3 in particular. His Barcarolle opens with massive chords and flamboyant ornaments; nothing effeminate in those trills. The gondolier’s waves become Charybdis and could swallow the world. The comeliness and confidence of the piece--the ease of period transitions--shine through despite grim sonic reproduction. The E-flat Major Nocturne has Ignaz Friedman as its champion, but Kapell finds his own treasures in its pearly, unhurried elegance, several times hinting at the E Minor Nocturne, Op. 72, No. 1. Brilliance and blazing speed of the Horowitz order for the pounding Scherzo in B Minor, whose middle section lullaby Kapell softens the entire ethos, permitting the polyphonic voices their blessed, embowered noels. The two stunning da capo chords and the final pages are Kapell’s version of the Atomic Bomb.
Ed Harcourt: Revolution Of The Heart MP3
Filter Magazine - Los Angeles,CA,USA
New Chopin-themed download from piano-playing UK singer-songwriter....
"Revolution Of The Heart" is Harcourt at his best: pouring his heart and soul out over Chopin piano progressions and delightful sha-na-nas, sung by members ...
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:
Soloist and Friends
By Stephen Smoliar(Stephen Smoliar)
San Francisco writer blogs about a noontime concert by pianist William Corbett-Jones featuring new Preludes by Roger Nixon, and not Preludes, but polonaises, by Chopin...
There was at least one "Chopin connection" in the conception of the overall program: Liszt preceded the selections by Nixon and Mechem and Chopin followed them. The program concluded with two polonaises, Opus 40, Number 1 in C minor and Opus 53 in A-flat major. The latter is sometimes known as the "Heroic" polonaise, although, as the most familiar in the collection of polonaises that Chopin composed, it might better be called the "War-Horse!" Like the earlier "Military" polonaise, Opus 53 performs an interesting experiment with an ostinato pattern subjected to a gradual crescendo; and Corbett-Jones did a wonderful job of making that crescendo the backbone of the middle section of the work.
The Rehearsal Studio - http://therehearsalstudio
Monday, May 26, 2008
The Chopin Currency - May 26th, 2008
Chopin News, Views, Previews, and Reviews:
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
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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.
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.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Chopin Currency - May 25, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
Ingrid Fliter: 'In the middle of my salad, he told me I'd won'
Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom
A "Get To Know Her" introduction to UK readers of It Girl Ingrid Fliter ...
Born in Argentina and now living in Milan, Fliter (pronounced Fleeter) has in the past toured Japan and the US and won the silver medal in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2000. But the Gilmore was an important catalyst, bringing her an EMI contract, management in the US and Europe, and a place on the BBC's New Generation Artists scheme. And now a series of dates in the UK will introduce her to wider audiences, with a Wigmore Hall recital and appearances at the Cheltenham and City of London Festivals.
"The Gilmore changed my life deeply, completely," she says. "In the beginning I had to deal with a lot of pressure and expectations," she admits. "But after two years I'm now really starting to enjoy this very hectic, intense concert life." Her London debut last year, together with her first disc of Chopin for EMI, confirmed her phenomenal technique and the spontaneity of expression she brings to music. There is also a fluent, singing quality to her playing. [...]
"Chopin made me discover the beauty of piano-playing," she says. "I was very lucky to be introduced to his music from the very beginning. Pianistically speaking, it develops the imagination and good taste as regards rubato - where to give and where to take, in a natural way that a singer would do. Rubato in Chopin is very often exaggerated, but I imagine him as a Classical composer, not as a Romantic, though that doesn't restrain you from being dramatic and dark. Sometimes the music reaches moments of deep sorrow."
The Chopin Experience, Radio 3
Independent - London,England,UK
More musings on the effect of the BBC's Chopin Experience...
In conversation with the pianist Nikolai Demidenko, the latter revealed that Chopin knew his limitations as a composer, but said that he knew that his work appealed particularly to women. "A short, direct line straight to the heart," he said, and Walker said "Mmm", and I was reminded of a friend of mine who said that the only time he really "got" Chopin was when he was in love. So, if you were in love during the weekend of 17-18 May, then you will have enjoyed The Chopin Experience immensely.
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Who needs Rudolf Nureyev?
The Observer - UK
No question what's the hot dance ticket in London town....this UK scribe says the current production of "Dances at a Gathering" (bodies by Robbins, soul by Chopin) is on par with the best ever...
Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering (1969) is a plotless work set to piano pieces by Chopin. Tender, dreamy and shot through with a sense of long-ago love affairs, the piece acquires a different dynamic with every cast. When the Royal Ballet danced it in the 1970s, it became a signature piece, a group portrait of an unforgettable constellation of stars. When the company performs Robbins's piece today, the layers of allusion are dense. But in a good way: the new cast has new things to tell us and is not about to be crowded off the stage by ghosts....
Chopin News from Outside of London:
After the Good Die Young
Wall Street Journal - USA
Beautifully-written article on the tragically short-lived pianist William Kapell, occasioned by the release of a just-discovered 1953 live concert performance in Australia that turned out to be Kapell's last recording...
You'd think that Kapell's youthful and spectacular demise would have captured the imagination of the listening public and ensured his lasting fame. Charlie Parker, who died two years later at the equally untimely age of 34, remains to this day a cultural icon. Likewise Jackson Pollock and James Dean, whose lives were cut short around the same time. Why, then, did Kapell slip through the cracks of renown? [...]
Kapell died too soon to record more than a handful of the large-scale works in his repertoire, but in recent years a fair number of live recordings have surfaced. RCA, his old label, has just released "Kapell Rediscovered," a two-CD set of radio broadcasts made during a 1953 tour of Australia. They are his last recordings -- he was killed flying home from that tour -- and they include a number of pieces that he never recorded in the studio, among them Chopin's B Minor Scherzo, Debussy's "Suite Bergamasque" and Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata. The sound is only fair, but the performances are pure Kapell, headlong, vital and crackling with a vibrant immediacy that makes you feel as though he were playing in your very own living room.
Chopin in the Blogosphere:
Chopin Nocturne in E MinorDedicated to Two Individuals
By Jeremiah Jones(Jeremiah Jones)
Chopin's Nocturne in E-minor is one of my favorite Nocturnes. It is a short, yet profound work of art that takes the listener through several of life's most important emotions. It can stir the soul and awaken the spirit. ...
- http://www.signmypiano.com/
By robkwok
A VideoSong is a new Medium with two rules:. 1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice). 2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds). The Giant. Radiohead and Chopin Combination ...
Unquality: Retarded Videos for... - http://www.unquality.com
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The Chopin Currency - May 24th, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
Mostly having to do with fallout and feedback from the BBC's Chopin Experience:
By Sawyl(Sawyl)
I like to think of Radio 3 as the rebel of the BBC family, hanging back while the others chase after listeners, growing its toenails and listening to Chopin. A classical music-fancying rebel; every family needs one. ...
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - http://sawyl.livejournal.com
New Classical Tracks: The allure and the thrill of Chopin
Minnesota Public Radio - Saint Paul,MN,USA
Radio review of Gilmore Prize winner Ingrid Fliter's new CD...
The young Argentine musician Ingrid Fliter is one of the brightest rising stars in the piano world. The composer she's most identified with is Chopin, and his music is the focus of her latest disc.
For her part, Ingrid Fliter has just released a new solo recording featuring works by Chopin, a composer she believes she was born to play.
"It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that if it had not been for Chopin's music, I wouldn't have been born," she explained. "My mother noticed my father for the first time while he was playing some Chopin waltzes during a party!
Ingrid Fliter replaces Anderszewski
Thenews.pl - Warsaw,Poland
Speaking of the Gilmore, one winner subs for another at the Barbican in London...
Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski was forced to cancel his appearance at London’s Barbican Centre tonight on the advice of his doctor. He is replaced by the Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter, Second Prize winner at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 2000. ...
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Royal Ballet Double Bill, Royal Opera House, London
Independent - London,England,UK
Rave review for the Royal Ballet revival of the Chopin-centric "Dances at a Gathering...."
Dances at a Gathering looks simple. Jerome Robbins' 1969 ballet puts 10 dancers on a bare stage, with a blue backdrop, set to Chopin piano pieces. The numbers are full of invention, yet they have to look easy. Robbins demands clean musicality and a sense of atmosphere. They're all there in this wonderfully fresh performance. It's more than 30 years since the Royal Ballet put on Dances at a Gathering. People who saw it in its early years still go dreamy over it. The ballet's atmosphere is fragile. This revival, staged by Susan Hendl and Ben Huys, has real warmth....
Chopin in the Blogosphere:
Mostly having to do with fallout and feedback from the BBC's Chopin Experience:The Chopin Experience
By vhk10
I listened to bits of this all-Chopin weekend on Radio 3. (I used to listen to and indeed play Chopin’s music a lot, and though it has retreated a bit in my musical consciousness he is still a favourite of mine). ...
The best aspect was hearing recordings from different eras and with different interpretations, rather than just good recent performances.
I recommend trying the Chopin Audio Quiz, which is not trivial, mainly because the extracts are from the middle of pieces.
VHK's singing - http://vhkssinging.wordpress
By Sawyl(Sawyl)
I like to think of Radio 3 as the rebel of the BBC family, hanging back while the others chase after listeners, growing its toenails and listening to Chopin. A classical music-fancying rebel; every family needs one. ...
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - http://sawyl.livejournal.com
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Chopin Currency - May 13, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
Gilmore artist Ingrid Fliter, Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra team up ...
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com - Kalamazoo,MI,USA
The penultimate performance at the Gilmore Fest draws raves...
One might consider Mozart as Fliter's specialty -- until she played Chopin.
Chopin's "Concerto No. 2 in F Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 21," the evening's final work, offered Fliter the perfect vehicle for her numerous keyboard strengths. Here, she cultivated a different musical voice. Controlled rubato throughout lent effective freshness and variety. Fliter was born to perform Chopin.
Her runs at first sounded overly fast but not for long. Pianissimos were a favorite for Fliter, who possessed a magical light touch. Yet the opening "Maestoso" also could reflect intense drama.
"Larghetto" became a personal cadenza for Fliter, she massaged malleable passages into her personal vision of Chopin's intents. Runs were pearly smooth, and limitless technique helped master filigreed passages. The music here was mesmerizing.
The closing "Allegro Vivace" became a frolicking dance comprised of continuous runs soaring across the keyboard. The KSO kept pace, as baton deferred to soloist. A standing ovation and six callbacks from the audience only hints at the ardor felt for Fliter.
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Bill Holm named McKnight Distinguished Artist
Minnesota Public Radio - Saint Paul,MN,USA
Radio piece about Minnesota poet and essayist Bill Holm, $50,000 richer thanks to an award from the McKnight Foundation. The author reveals that his immediate plans include reconsidering (and mastering) Chopin:
Holm also has a book of poetry about Iceland to finish. In fact, he said he has a goal of writing better poetry and improving his skills at the piano, particularly with the works of Bach. "And I've started another project that pianists shouldn't avoid for too long, and that is trying to play Chopin decently. I used to make fun of Chopin, but now, the more I play him, the better he gets," said Holm. "He's an extraordinary genius. So I am going to see if I can play a half dozen Chopin pieces decently before I can't remember who Chopin was."
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Chopin Currency - May 7, 2008
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.
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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.
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/
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Chopin Currency: April 22, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
Pianist Born to the Colors of Chopin
New York Times - United States
Veteran New York Times critic Bernard Holland isn't thrilled about Ingrid Fliter's Beethoven and Schubert, but is charmed by her Chopin:
The Ingrid Fliter who appeared after intermission was a different person. She was born to play Chopin, and she knows it. The colors are many and subtle, the range of loud to soft is unusually various, and she has the sensibility for Chopin’s graceful, linear give-and-take. The pieces were the Nocturne in B and the B minor Piano Sonata. The Met Museum’s audience liked both very much.
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Cliburn Gold Medal winner's performance "impeccable"
Montgomery Advertiser - Montgomery,AL,USA
Meanwhile, a Montgomery (Alabama) critic finds the Beethoven and Chopin performances by Van Cliburn Competition winner Alex Kobrin to be indistinguishable, which is a good thing...
Six Chopin pieces followed – the heroic G minor “Ballade” to start this section, the dramatic F minor “Ballade” to end it, and in between four “Impromptus,” the last of which was the familiar “Fantasie-Impromptu” best known for its lyrical second theme.
For a gold medal winner, there is no need to comment on technique. It was impeccable as expected. But what distinguished this pianist was his thoughtful approach to every phrase. In the most cerebral, expressive phrases he slowed the tempo but never lost the intensity of those phrases and found significance in each note. He saved speed for the most impassioned sections.
His program showed a special affinity for the Romantics, drawing flowing melodies and dramatic climaxes from both Beethoven and Chopin. Both composers had much the same style in Kobrin’s playing.
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Phuong Nam to release 13 albums by pianist Dang Thai Son
VietNamNet Bridge - Hanoi,Vietnam
Vietnamese press agency announces the release of the biography and a baker's dozen of recordings by Vietnamese favorite-son pianist, (winner of the 1980 Chopin Competition) as he prepares to return to his hometown of Ho Chi Minh City...
Victor Entertainment permitted Vietnam’s Phuong Nam Film to release this collection. These are high-quality products which bring listeners poetic melodies by Tchaikovsky and romantic rhythms by Mendelssohn, Liszt, the sophistication of Ravel, and especially, immortal melodies by Chopin, whose music works account for around nine of the 13 CDs. For the first time, the book “A pianist loved by Chopin – the Dang Thai Son story”, published by Yahama Music Media Corporation in Japan in 2003, will be published in Vietnam. The book’s author is Japanese journalist Ikuma Yoshiko, who loves the Vietnamese pianist’s music. Dang Thai Son is the first Asian artist to win first prize at the Concours Chopin and the pianist holds the highest number of sub-prizes in the history of this music award. American pianist Isaac Stern (1920-2001), who received a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1987, said Dang Thai Son is a musical genius.
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Richard Goode's Gilmore Festival Prelude recital worth the wait ...
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com - Kalamazoo,MI,USA
Goode plays great Chopin (among other things) at the Gilmore....
Goode's greatest strength was a consummate ability to convey beautiful musical sense, without injecting a performer's egoistic detractions.Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48, No. 1, was first of several Chopin works. Goode's playing here showed superlative use of dynamics and miraculous control of octave runs. Of four Chopin Mazurkas performed, the E Minor, Op. 41, No. 2, most engaged the large audience by virtue of an ingratiating mellow effect. [...]
Three final Chopin pieces ended the program. Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54, was my favorite. Goode invested drama in a work that featured a steady thematic line surrounded by bustling musical ornaments. Goode's quick hands gloriously executed chromatic runs and challenging arpeggios. The other pieces, fine overall, were blemished by Goode's stomping foot. The encore -- what else?: another Chopin "bijou."
Cultured Tangos
Blogcritics.org - Aurora,OH,USA
Yesterday it was Enrique Granados being called "The Brazilian Chopin." Today a Blogcritics magazine writer likens Chopin to Argentinian tango-master Astor Piazzolla...
It may be that in musical retrospect, from a luxury of twenty-twenty critical hindsight, that Astor Piazzolla will be seen as having done in the twentieth century for the tango what Frederick Chopin did in the nineteenth for the waltz. It is perhaps already an accepted position. With the waltz, Chopin took an established popular form and stretched its boundaries so that what an audience might have expected to be a little ditty was recast to express heroism, sensuality, pride, or even occasional doubt. The little dance tune then, in Chopin's slender hands, became an elegant art form, highly expressive, utterly Romantic in its ability to convey human emotion....See all stories on this topic
The planned Chopin marathon on BBC Radio 3 prompts a Brit blogger's musings on Chopiniana...
I ask him if he’s seen the romantic comedy Impromptu, starring a pre-Richard Curtis Hugh Grant as the consumptive composer:
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0102103/It’s one of my favourite movies that people haven’t heard of. The director is James Lapine, better known for the original stagings of Sondheim musicals like Sunday In The Park With George and Into The Woods, and it has the same sense of anachronistic wit in a period setting, not least Judy Davis’s constant exclamation of ‘Balls!’
In fact, it ties in with my theme of the other day - a romance between a butch woman (Ms Davis as the cross-dressing novelist George Sand) and a fragile, stuttering man with floppy hair (guess who). Add Emma Thompson as a dim aristocrat, and Mandy Patinkin in funny, swaggering Princess Bride mode, and it’s something of a gem. How much of the Chopin history is correct I have no idea, but I’d say the film could be compared with Moulin Rouge and the BBC version of Casanova (the one with David Tennant), in eschewing period accuracy in favour of unabashed fun.
Diary at the Centre of the Earth - http://dickonedwards.co.uk/diary
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Chopin Currency - April 16, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, Previews, and Broadcasts:
BBC dedicates weekend to Chopin
BBC News - UK
BBC Radio 3 announces a blockbuster weekend dedicated to Chopin (May 17-18, 2008, including the launch of "a dedicated website, launched as part of the Chopin weekend, will feature video piano lessons by pianist David Owen Norris, for those who want to try their hand at some of Chopin's more approachable pieces."
BBC Radio 3 is to broadcast every note written by Frederic Chopin during a weekend dedicated to the Polish composer, who died in 1849 aged 39. The Chopin Experience, which runs on 17-18 May, follows similiar tributes by the station to Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Tchaikovsky. The weekend will explore how Chopin revolutionised piano music, as well as his troubled personal life. The weekend will also include the most famous recordings of Chopin's work. His set of 24 Etudes will be aired in unbroken sequence featuring 24 different pianists. Piano lessons Dedicated programmes will look at the influence of Polish folk music on the composer - and how the composer continues to influence the Polish music scene....
See all stories on this topic
The Press Association -
Every note written by Polish composer Frederic Chopin is to be broadcast in a single weekend on Radio 3. The Chopin Experience follows a Beethoven week, ...
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PERFORMING ARTS: Sergio Tiempo
Washington Post - United States
Review of a DC recital by thirtysomething protege of Martha Argerich....critic finds his passion praiseworthy, the technical slips less so...
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Sergio Tiempo, the immensely talented Venezuelan-born pianist, uses his colossal technique to produce a spectrum of colors and dynamic nuance from the piano. His program at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Saturday afternoon included Haydn's delightful Sonata in D, Hob. XVI: 37; Chopin's Sonata No. 3 in B Minor; Ravel's suite "Gaspard de la Nuit"; and the "Consolation" No. 3 and "Mephisto" Waltz No. 1 of Liszt....
Tiempo also possesses a golden singing sound, ravishingly displayed in the Chopin and Liszt pieces.... The same lyrical impulse pervaded the Haydn sonata, in an interpretation perhaps more operatic than symphonic.
Tiempo's great strength is his white-hot intensity. When combined with his cultivated musical intelligence, it achieves strikingly original results. Yet his passionate exuberance occasionally overflows into impetuousness. Hyperkinetic momentum resulted in memory slips in movements of the Haydn and Chopin sonatas. And structural integrity in the Chopin finale and the "Mephisto" Waltz was undermined by unchecked fortissimo power surges. But these missteps could not diminish the visceral excitement of the program.
Alexander Kobrin, Skillful Pianist
Baltimore Sun - United States
Kobrin, The reigning Van Cliburn champ, comes to Bahlmore and gets a mixed review....
Alexander Kobrin, the Russian pianist who took the gold at the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition, breezed through Baltimore - and a Beethoven-Chopin program - Sunday at a packed Har Sinai Congregation in Owings Mills. The free recital, another generous gift to the music community from the Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust, reaffirmed the great technical fluency I observed from Kobrin during the Cliburn finals, but left me somewhat less impressed when it came to his stylistic and interpretive matters. (I wasn't too keen on the many restless and cell phone-ridden members of the audience, either.)See all stories on this topic[...]
Kobrin, who is not yet out of his 20s, maintained a dry-eyed demeanor when he turned to Chopin, avoiding anything strikingly individualistic in the shaping of line or rhythmic pulse, and he continued to push things along when given half a chance. Still, there were elegant touches along the way, especially in a group of Impromptus. It will be interesting to see, and hear, how Kobrin's career unfolds.
Cellist Jan Vogler finds voices
Philadelphia Inquirer - Philadelphia,PA,USA
A Jekyll-and-Hyde performance by the East German-born cellist in Philly, featuring boring Beethoven, but captivating Chopin....
With sturdy and accommodating pianist Louis Lortie as his partner, the cellist with a sweet smile and a straight mop of sandy hair limited his range of colors in Beethoven's Sonata in A major (Op. 69), and even in Schumann's Opus 73 Fantasiestücke. So much so that a certain monotony set in. Vogler's tone is rather nasal, which to these ears made him a considerably less interesting cellist than one usually hears at these Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concerts. It made him less interesting, too, than the cellist he became after intermission, in Takemitsu's Orion (from 1984), Chopin's Sonata in G minor (Op. 65), and an encore of the Falla Ritual Fire Dance. Who was that playing those beefy pizzicato notes in the Falla? In the Takemitsu, where Debussy was never too far harmonically, microtones and slides granted Vogler permission to become almost vocally expressive. And where had that cellist been who was now intensely searching each phrase for emotional meaning in the Chopin? Beethoven can withstand that kind of treatment, too - happily so, though not on this day.He seemed, at first, like one kind of cellist, and then another. Until the end of his Sunday afternoon recital at Independence Seaport Museum, when you realized that Jan Vogler was intent on crafting stylistic approaches so different to each composer, you might have been left searching for the musician's core personality.
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Award gave Argentine's career a lift
Fort Worth Star Telegram - Fort Worth,TX,USA
Texas-sized profile and Q & A with Gilmore Award winner Ingrid Fliter, who reveals that literally owes her life to Chopin...
Why did you choose to feature pieces by Chopin on your new CD?
My father used to play the piano. That's the way my parents met at a party -- my mother noticed my father while he was playing on the piano some Chopin waltzes. So I have to say that I exist thanks to Chopin.
What do you love about Chopin's Sonata No. 3, which you'll play Tuesday at the Kimbell?
I think it is one of the most important and one of the most beautiful pieces Chopin wrote. That sonata gives you a very huge spectrum of Chopin's sound world. I have the feeling that all the human experiences are put in that sonata. It is very touching to me
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Monday, April 14, 2008
The Chopin Currency - April 14, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
"Dear Frederic" - Complexions Contemporary Ballet
calendarlive.com - Los Angeles,CA,USA
Review of "vibrant Chopin" as part of a "sensational seven-part program," which opens with a brief primer on the Chopin dance oeuvre...
Chopin never wrote a ballet. But that hasn't stopped choreographers from mining his music. Fokine created "Chopiniana" in 1894 and revised it in 1908, and it appeared in that enduring form under a new title, "Les Sylphides," when Diaghilev introduced it to the West in 1909.
Ashton created the heartbreaking "A Month in the Country" in 1976. Robbins couldn't keep away either. Count four Robbins ballets set to his music: "The Concert" (1956), "Dances at a Gathering" (1969), "In the Night" (1970) and "Other Dances" (1974). The last three are classics.
Against such luminaries, choreographing another Chopin ballet may seem an almost reckless act. But what Dwight Rhoden, co-founder of Complexions Contemporary Ballet,
Rhoden's Chopin is no pale, terminally ill Romantic languishing in Paris salons. He's a successor to Bach and an inheritor of Baroque drive.
Gilmore artist update: Ingrid Fliter racks up rave reviews
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com - Kalamazoo,MI,USA
Regular readers to Chopin2010 will recognize some of the quotes here...
"(H)ow adequately to praise Thursday's performance of the Chopin F minor Piano Concerto, with Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter?" asked Dallas Morning News music critic Scott Cantrell in a review of Fliter's appearance with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in February. "I can't think of another performance so compellingly personalized since the glorious 1935 recording by Alfred Cortot and John Barbirolli.In the 11 months since she last visited Kalamazoo, 2006 Gilmore Artist Ingrid Fliter has continued to tour the world -- and continued to rack up the kind of reviews most pianists would kill for.
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Friday, April 11, 2008
The Chopin Currency - April 11, 2008
Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:
Finale at the Wichita Symphony
The Wichita Eagle - Wichita,KS,USA3
Three-paragraph preview of Ingrid Fliter's appearance in Kansas:
1) Fliter won the Gilmore Artist Award in 2006, with its top prize of $300,000. The cachet that came with the award elevated her career. Her calendar filled with concert dates and she signed on with the EMI record label to produce an all-Chopin CD. It was released this month.
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Review: Orchestra of Opera North with Evgenia Rubinova *****
Yorkshire Post - Leeds,England,UK
More praise for Evgenia Rubinova in Yorkshire...
A young musician who understands a composer's intentions and successfully conveys that to an audience is a delight indeed.So it is with Evgenia Rubinova, a pianist fully in command of any technical difficulties. Her performance of Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto was enthralling, from her first entry, through the slow movement with which she held our breath with astonishing gentleness, to the light exhilaration of the finale. She is an artist with penetrating musical insight and a self-effacing calm that holds her listeners – not so much in the palms of her own hands, but more so within the composer's spirit.
Famed pianist visits site of his debut at age 10
Pittsburgh Post Gazette - Pittsburgh,PA,USA
Acclaimed Chopin interpreter Byron Janis returns to his Pittsburgh hometown, filmmaker in tow...
He is in town as the subject of a documentary on his life by filmmaker Peter Rosen. With Janis' wife, Maria Cooper Janis (the daughter of actor Gary Cooper), they also are visiting the pianist's childhood home in Squirrel Hill and his elementary school, Colfax. Janis went on to a celebrated career as a interpreter of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and more....
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Read Byron Janis' essay on Chopin here
A cultural plenary: Heritage label, jobs in culture, subtitles
EurofundingMag - Paris,France
A Chopin 2010 bill is afoot in the European Parliament...
Another proposal is for 2010 to be made the European year to celebrate the life of Chopin and 2011 the European year of Greek and Latin classics. ...
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:
Musical Interlude
By Mirek(Mirek)
A montage from a Chopin film...
... lonely day outside or that the actor reminded me somewhat of my son. Whatever the reason, this clip melted me. It is a montage of photos from a Polish Chopin film (CHOPIN PRAGNIENIE MILOSCI, 2002) scored with Chopin's Waltz no. ...
mirek blog - http://mireklipinski.blogspot
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About Chopin2010
- The Chopin Currency
- ....is a roundup of all things Chopin leading up to the 200th anniversary of the matchless Polish composer for the piano in March 2010.
