The Chopin Currency - May 20th, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

A Country in the Moon, by Michael Moran
Independent - London,England,UK

Review declares Michael Moran's new book about Poland to be an "absorbing, exasperating and ultimately rewarding travelogue."

Moran emerges from these pages as a romantic, a bon viveur, a music lover and a film buff, equally versed in the polonaises of Chopin, the novels of Joseph Conrad and the movies of Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski. He conducts a clandestine affair with unhappily married Zosia, and together they explore the historic cities of her country. His sojourn comes to a premature end when the project's rackety finances expire. The last chapters briskly fast-forward up to the death of Pope John Paul II. As for his romance with Zosia, reader, I wouldn't dream of giving the game away.

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Chopin master returns to Barboursville
Orange County Review - Orange,VA,USA

Somewhat confusing review of young Polish pianist Jacek Kortus' performance in Virginia Wine Country....

Kortus’ return engagement was the fourth in a series of benefit concerts for the Chopin Foundation. This year’s event was hosted by Barboursville Winery and sponsored again by Premier Virginia Properties. As a special treat, Washington National Opera Conductor Maestro Giovanni Reggioli introduced Kortus and the Chopin pieces he would perform in the first half of Thursday’s concert. [...]

Joking aside, the maestro described Chopin as “good music of the people” and said the composer’s works were “good for the first-time person or for the person who studies it for life.”

Kortus, a serious and intense young man of supreme focus, opened the program with Frederic Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor Op. 48, No. 1. He followed with Waltz in A Flat Major Op. 34, No. 1 that conjured images of a gilded 19th century ballroom full of lords and ladies that finished with such an uplifting flourish everyone in the audience was smiling.

The third selection was Mazurkas in B Flat Major Op. 18, No. 1 and No. 4 in A Minor which began rather chillingly sad only to finish with an offer of hope. In his last selection before the intermission, he performed Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat Minor, Op. 35 where he balanced the emotion of the piece with his technical skill in moments both fiercely fast and smoothly slow. At times the piece sounded otherworldly with such vibrations it seemed the piano might simply explode from the music.

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The Chopin Currency - May 12, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Sejm declares 2010 Year of Chopin
Thenews.pl - Warsaw,Poland

The Polish Parliment makes an Official Proclamation, preceded by "lively debate." And just what DID happen to the Piano in the House?

The Sejm, Polish lower chamber of parliament, has unanimously passed a bill declaring 2010 the Year of Frederic Chopin.

The vote on the bill was preceded by a lively debate. Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski stated that the primary objective would be to celebrate and popularize the work of Chopin, adding that the celebrations around the Year of Frederic Chopin, which also marks his 200th birthday anniversary, will require a certain amount of organized effort.

Zrojewski concluded in saying that some work is already in progress, like renovating the seat of the Frederic Chopin Association (TFIC) in Warsaw.

Wide-ranging preparations for the Chopin Year also include a thorough refurbishment of the manor house in Zelazowa Wola near Warsaw, the composer's birthplace, and the opening of a Chopin Centre in Warsaw.

MP Tadeusz Cymanski from the Law and Justice (PiS) opposition reminded his colleagues that there was a piano on display in the parliament's building since 1989 but it was sold last year in what could be regarded as rather unclear circumstances. Cymanski expressed hope that the instrument will return to the Sejm.

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Chopin: 10 steps to greatness
Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom

Coinciding with the launch of the BBC Radio 3 Chopin broadcast extravaganza - a Top Ten-type list of reasons of what makes Fryderyk so distinct:

4 Conquering the world

Chafing in Warsaw, the 21-year-old Chopin set off round Europe, pitching up in 1831 in Paris. Within a few months he was friendly with writers such as Victor Hugo, painters such as Delacroix and of course musicians including Liszt and Berlioz. All these arts were becoming more "poetic", but what Paris lacked was a "poet of the piano". Chopin was attractively melancholy, always à la mode, and had impeccable manners.

5 Being the perfect romantic

In 1832 Chopin gave his first concert in Paris. He hated the experience, and in all his life gave no more than 30. But those were enough to make him the perfect image of the romantic pianist. One critic said: "Nothing equals the lightness, the sweetness with which this artist preludes on the piano." Chopin's Nocturnes and Waltzes are the perfection of the Romantic miniature - but small doesn't mean negligible. "Guns buried in flowers" is how Schumann described them.

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Whatever Happened to Michal Baranski?
All About Jazz - Philadelphia,PA,USA

A check-in on the careers of a trio of teen prodigies from Poland, including jazz/classical pianist Mateusz Kolakowski:

Nine years ago, the clarinetist, improvisational whistler and musical educator Brad Terry hosted in the United States three young musicians he had worked with in Poland. I mean young.

Mateusz Kolakowski, the pianist, was thirteen. In this picture from that period, we see him with Terry. Bassist Michal Baranski and drummer Tomek Torres were fifteen. Terry toured the country with them in his old Dodge van, overnighting in RV parks and driveways and playing whenever they could, sometimes in paying gigs.
[...]

As for Baranski's former trio mates, Kolakowski is still pursuing Chopin, Paderewski and jazz. Torres, though he is Polish, is exploring his Latin heritage.

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Pianist Hamelin sets high bar
Denver Post - Denver,CO,USA

A preview to a Denver recital appearance by pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, where he reveals his Chopin-inspired composing ambitions:

In addition to a couple of Haydn sonatas, two Chopin works and Leopold Godowsky's Symphonic Metamorphoses on Johann Strauss' "Wine, Women and Song," Hamelin will perform two of his recently composed etudes.

"They are part of my soon-to-be-completed project to compose an etude in every minor key," said the virtuoso, who began his piano studies at age 5 on the urging of his pharmacist father. "I was much younger when I started the project, but then, composing was never the preponderance of my work. I think of myself as a pianist who writes, not the other way around."

Hamelin describes his compositional style as "tonal with lots of chromaticism."

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The Chopin Currency - May 9, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Concert review: Young Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz dazzles ...
San Jose Mercury News - CA, USA

A Bay Area reviewer isn't quite ready to hand the Chopin crown to the hot young Polish pianist....

His performance May 4 at Le Petit Trianon in San Jose, which concluded with the Preludes, the full two dozen, was very, very good: Blechacz has an awesome command of the keyboard, plays with a stunning ease.

But he also seems to realize - I'm projecting here - that he needs to transcend his mechanics, to plumb the depths. So, at least on Sunday, amid the stream of jaw-dropping technique, he kept making these stabs at introspection. They didn't exactly seem premeditated; in fact, they were charming. But they didn't reach their marks.

He needs seasoning, in other words. And it will be interesting to follow him the next few years, to see where his huge gifts and his intuition lead him. [...]

After intermission came Chopin's Preludes, exquisite and familiar.

In the first dozen, comprising Book I, Blechacz didn't get past what we already know about them. For instance, No. 4, the famous E minor "Largo," was all cliche: earnest melancholy.

But before beginning Book II, he drew out a handkerchief and wiped off the keys. It wasn't meant as a symbolic gesture, yet, from that point on, his performance gained traction: pointillist bursts in No. 18, the F minor; anvil chords and brokenhearted lyricism in No. 20, the C minor; scary agitation in No. 22, the G minor.

No. 24 in D minor, the closer, ran out of drama; Blechacz seemed tired. But he recovered for the last encore, Moszkowski's "La Jongleuse" ("The Lady Juggler"), a crazily difficult piece through which he flew with the greatest of ease. The amazing young man may as well have been pulling taffy.

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Magnetic Poles
guardian.co.uk - UK

Another glowing review for a journey through modern Poland by Australian author Michael Moran, who "had no links with Poland, other than a death bed pledge to his uncle to try to understand the patriotic roots of Chopin's music."

When Moran escapes the crumbling school, the book is lifted on to another plane. By following the course of the Vistula – one of the last great natural rivers in Europe – and then criss-crossing the country during the first international car rally in generations, he begins to fill the absences in our knowledge. On the road he relates – for example — the history of Partition, when thousands of intellectuals were forced to walk to Siberia – an 18-month journey – where they were chained to wheelbarrows night and day and worked to death. He considers our debt to the 8,500 Polish airmen whose élan and tactics helped to win the Battle of Britain. He details the iniquity of the Katyn massacre and betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising. He celebrates Chopin and the "frisson of close Polish dancing". His breadth of knowledge is profound, his views opinionated, his writing passionate and heart-felt. The result is the best contemporary travel book on Poland, reminiscent in its finest moments of Patrick Leigh Fermor's masterful Time of Gifts

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Gilmore Festival performer Stephen Hough masterfully executes ...
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com - Kalamazoo,MI,USA

The British pianist (recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant) writes the notes, then plays the program, to memorable effect...

The printed program notes, written by Hough himself, explained the first half of the concert centered on "Variations," the second on the Waltz. He opened with Mendelssohn's "Variations Serieuses," Op. 54, comprised of two dozen very different variations. Quickly evident were Hough's incredible hands and touch. Master of pianissimo and presto, he also commanded double fortes and andante passages; meanwhile his octave runs were unfailingly prodigious. [...]

Wed to his sensitive insights was extraordinary keyboard technique, evidenced further in the remainder of the program featuring Weber, Saint-Saens, Chabrier, Debussy and, fortunately for all, Chopin and Liszt.

Two familiar Chopin Waltzes --the C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2, and the A-flat Major, Op. 34, No. 1 -- were gorgeously played. Each note was given full attention, as though never heard before. In the A-flat Major waltz, Hough showed uncanny ability to sound different melodic lines, played by a single hand. The effect was astonishing.

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Recital shows pianist Ohlsson at top of his game
Akron Beacon Journal - Akron,OH,USA

Whenever Garrick Ohlsson plays, Chopin is never very far away. First line says it all: "Garrick Ohlsson makes a virtue of middle age."

Continuing in the key of C-sharp minor, Ohlsson knocked out a thrillingly fast and accurate version of the Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 4. It was a wild ride that could only make you smile.

''One more?'' Ohlsson silently mouthed to someone at the front of the audience, grinning as he asked. He proceeded with the Chopin Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2. Here, he dazzled with the delicacy and lightness of his playing.

Oh, yes, there was more before the encores. [...]

Finishing the first half with Chopin's Sonata No. 3, Op. 58 was a move well calculated to get everyone buzzing with oohs and aahs. This was not the Chopin of a delicate aesthete but of a full-blooded romantic, with jaw-dropping fast runs and a galloping rhythmic drive in the finale.

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Ohlsson's performance (above) also inspires a video posting on the blog below:

Chopin Prelude Op 45 Prelude No.16 Op.25 Garrick Ohlsson
By Cheryl and Janet Snell(Cheryl and Janet Snell)

Janet took our mom to see this pianist last night. He played three encores after a finger-crunching program. The Chopin was a sonata, not this Prelude, but you get the idea.
Scattered Light - http://snellsisters.blogspot.com/

The Chopin Currency - May 8, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

A Country In The Moon is a poetic exploration
Metro - London,UK

Echoes of Chopin abound in a new travelogue through post-Communist Poland by an Australian author '"honoring a deathbed pledge to his uncle– an eccentric concert pianist obsessed with the music of Chopin...."

Michael Moran spent the best part of two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall based mostly in brutalist Warsaw.

He also travelled extensively elsewhere through Poland, often in the footsteps of his beloved Chopin, who provides a silent accompaniment to his wanderings.

Recalling something of WG Sebald, Moran's poetic exploration of Poland's deeply chequered past mixes the recent rapid changes that followed the collapse of communism with Poland's wider, shifting history of loss, occupation and mass population displacement under the Russians and the Germans.

Moran is a sensitive, intelligent companion, as able to capture the rapacious spirit and chaotic conditions of modern Poland as he is the mournful, savage ghosts of its past - the result is moving and absorbing.

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A cellist with fervor, and maturity beyond her years
Boston Globe - United States

Fiery young cellist Alisa Weilerstein gets generally high marks for her performance and personality at a Boston recital with pianist Inon Barnatan , though her Chopin is hardly the high point....

...She closed the program with Barnatan returning to the stage for a jointly sensitive reading of Chopin's Cello Sonata (Op. 65). In this case, however, the Chopin sounded a bit too similar to the Beethoven, highlighting the way that Weilerstein's strong musical personality seems to flood everything she plays. In other words, she is still grappling with the paradox of how to perform with such a distinctive individual stamp while avoiding a creeping sense of sameness; how to have a strong interpretive voice while still granting the temperature, moods, colors, and sensibilities of a work their own radically independent lives

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Montero's true talent lies in the improv
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Milwaukee,WI,USA

Things go better for Gabriela Montero once she departs from the script...

Pianist Gabriela Montero played Chopin and Bach/Busoni as if she were making it up as she went along, and not in a good way.

Montero's bangy dynamics and lurching phrasing made for an awkward, inelegant Ballade No. 3. And that implacable forward drive that is the essence of Bach's Chaconne, as its chord pattern turns over and over, was nowhere to be found....

[...]

In the second half, Montero did make it up as she went along, and in a very good way.

Reviving a practice common in the days of Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven, she improvised on themes called out by the audience. The lively give and take between performer and patrons resulted in: Paganini's 24th Caprice for Violin, woven into clever and sophisticated two- and three-part inventions; "The House of the Rising Sun," percolating in ragtime and jumping in stride style; "Summertime," re-imagined as Rachmaninoff; "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring," in dizzying Art Tatum jazz turns and an intense Astor Piazzolla tango twist; and an "Amazing Grace" after Chopin at his most intimate.

In every case, she showed an astonishing ear, vivid imagination and canny sense of historical style. Every improvisation took the theme somewhere you never would have imagined but that made perfect sense in context. In every case, the theme went on a plausible but surprising harmonic adventure and came to satisfying closure. Montero wasn't just noodling over tunes, she was composing on the spot at a high level. Lots of pianists can play better Chopin, but almost no one can do what she did in the second half of this concert.

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Festival puts fleet fingers to good use
Ventura County Star - Camarillo,CA,USA

Italian pianist Giuseppe Albanese hits the Ventura highway...

Ventura Music Festival artistic director Nuvi Mehta had it just right when he said Saturday's concert was destined to create "an illusion that pianists have four hands."

Giuseppe Albanese, a 29-year-old Italian keyboard artist who made his West Coast debut at last year's festival, had his hands full with a program of some of the most demanding pieces in piano literature: Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata, Schubert's "Wanderer" Fantasie, Chopin's Polonaise-fantasie in A-flat Major and Liszt's "Reminiscences de Norma."

But the young Italian has more than fleet fingers. He also has a well-honed musicality that captures the relative buoyancy and melodic profusion of Schubert's "Wanderer," the Polish themes and rhythms so elegantly summoned by Chopin and the bravura style of Liszt.

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The Chopin Currency - April 9, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Dave Brubeck wins medal for spreading jazz abroad
Reuters - USA

The legendary jazzman comes to Washington DC to be honored by the State Department - and to explain his connection to Chopin (including a visit to Poland a half-century ago. He says: "Now, I'm about to play a cold piano with cold hands. I would like to say about the piece that my mother was part Polish, and loved Chopin. When I went to visit the Chopin Museum I took that thought with me to the next concert. I tried to say to the Polish audience dziekuje, (thank you)...It's a hard thing."

"As a little girl I grew up on the sounds of Dave Brubeck because my dad was your biggest fan," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at ceremony where Brubeck received the department's Ben Franklin Award for public diplomacy.

"Thank you for your patriotism and your leadership in representing America by introducing the language, the sounds and the spirit of jazz to new generations around the world," she added.

Best known for his quartet's 1959 hit "Take Five," Brubeck, 87, then sat down at a piano to play his improvisational piece "dziekuje," which means "thank you" in Polish, composed partly in memory of his mother's love for Polish composer Frederic Chopin.

Watch the video of Brubeck here - he appears about 24:00 in:

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Ohlsson's firm, eclectic recital
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA

Kudos for an accomplished "industrial-strength" recital by 1970 Chopin Competition winner Garrick Ohlsson....

Mr. Ohlsson followed the Prokofiev with Frederic Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58. Composed in 1844, it is distinctive for its expansive structure which, like the Prokofiev, adds a fourth movement to the sonata form's conventional three.

The artist launched the Chopin with a stirring allegro maestoso, though we wish he hadn't skipped the repeat of the opening motif. The brief, rapid scherzo, which follows, oddly (or intentionally) foreshadowed the Scriabin sonata scheduled later on the program.

After a thoughtful "Largo" movement, Mr. Ohlsson's sweeping, majestic take on the finale was notable for its impeccably clean passagework.

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Kudos to music critic
MiamiHerald.com - Miami,FL,USA

How often do you see THIS headline? (The review in question is summarized in the April 3 Chopin Currency)

Re Lawrence A. Johnson's April 2 review, Yundi Li shows more fire than poetry: Hats off to your classical music critic for a well-balanced review.

As a long-standing member of the Chopin Council of Miami, it was very pleasing to read this well-written review, which gave an accurate description of this young pianist's performance. Congrats to Johnson, who has found favor with our classical enthusiasts in South Florida.

ROY S. TENN, Palmetto Bay

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Piano instructor to play in Poland
Henderson State University Oracle - Arkadelphia,AR,USA

Arkansas piano prof to head to Chopin's old Academy for the summer...

John Lee Roberts, instructor of piano and adjunct professor in the keyboard division at Henderson, will attend and perform at an intensive summer program in Warsaw, Poland this summer.

Roberts was invited by Dr. Andzej Dutkiewicz, professor of piano and head of Contemporary Music Studies at the Frederic Chopin Academy of Music as part of the academy's 10th Anniversary of "From Chopin to Gorecki -- Sources and Inspirations."

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