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."

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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....

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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.

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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/

Jack Conte’s Video Song - The Giant, Radiohead/Chopin

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

The Chopin Currency - May 24th, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

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!

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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....

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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.com

Bad to the bone
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

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:

Listen to feature audio

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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The Chopin Currency - May 10, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Felder completes composer trilogy with 'Beethoven' premiere
North County Times - Escondido,CA,USA

Really having more to do with Ludwig than Fryderyk, a preview of Hershey Felder's new one-man show in San Diego...

Like the other two plays, "Beethoven, As I Knew Him" is a roughly 100-minute, intermissionless play with music written by and starring Felder (a piano prodigy who grew in Canada's Yiddish theater circuit) telling the composer's story in words and music from the piano bench.

"Gershwin Alone" features the brash, Brooklyn-born Jazz Age composer recounting his life up until his tragic 1937 death from a brain aneurysm at age 38. "Monsieur Chopin" finds the Polish composer Frederic Chopin in his Parisian salon a few years before his 1849 tuberculosis death at age 39, explaining his struggle with "melancholy" (bipolar disorder), his love affair with George Sand and his life and music.

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From disparate halves, a thrilling whole
Buffalo News - NY, United States

Gabriela Montero's first half gets the better grade in Buffalo, though Chopin still suffers...

The two halves to Montero’s concert were vastly different. The first half was all classical — the Bach/Busoni, then Chopin’s Ballade No. 3, then the Sonata No. 1, by Alberto Ginastera.

You would have to have been dead not to have been thrilled and excited by that Bach. Busoni knew how to work a piece for showmanship, how to bring out its contrasts and climaxes, and Montero played right along. Besides drama, the piece had depth and emotion.[...]

The Chopin sounded a bit frantic, not as romantic as it could have been. Poor thing. It was sandwiched between that Bach and the stormy Ginastera, and Montero might have worked herself into a bit of a lather...

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Montreal pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin wows crowd at the Gilmore Festival
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com - Kalamazoo,MI,USA

Meanwhile, in Kalamazoo, the parade of A-list pianists continues, with generous amounts of Chopin on their programs:

The Chopin Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58 presented a different set of challenges in its stark contrasts between virtuosic outbursts and tender, thinly scored romantic tunes. Hamelin displayed remarkable control at the lowest dynamic levels, caressing every note of Chopin's beautiful melodies.

The second movement Scherzo had incredible drive as a result of his very ambitious tempo and meticulous articulation. The precious nature of the scant two- and three-part writing of the third movement Largo was nurtured along with the utmost care. Then, Hamelin unleashed a hitherto unheard power in the "Finale: Presto" non tanto that proved a perfect foil to the delicate third movement.

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Chopin Downloads, Legal and otherwise...

Chopin - 24 Preludes op 28, Grigory Sokolov

By admin
Composed by Fryderyk Chopin Grigory Sokolov, piano Live Paris 17th June 1990. Grigory Sokolov (born April 18, 1950 in Leningrad) is a Russian pianist. Sokolov began studying the piano at the age of five, entering the Leningrad ...
Music-Download.cc - http://www.music-download.cc

Jorgeous : Tributo a Chopin
By Jorgeous

Starts off sounding more like Satie than Chopin...

Jorgeous - Tributo a Chopin. Jorgeous - Tributo a Chopin.
Jamendo - http://www.jamendo.com/

Chopin Photos:

Chopin.
By nobody@flickr.com (ianharrywebb)

Click on the link to see the row house in the Scottish capital...

ianharrywebb posted a photo:. Chopin. Chopin's home while in Edinburgh.
Uploads from ianharrywebb - http://www.flickr.com/photos/iansdigitalphotos/

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: April 29, 2008

Chopin Video of the Day:

Woody Woodpecker: "Musical Moments from Chopin"

Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda give a piano performance for an audience of barnyard animals. Soundtrack is provided by the duo-piano team of (Thomas) Saidenberg & (Edward) Rebner.


Revver Media RSS - http://revver.com


Chopin News, Reviews & Previews:

A Poet of the Piano, in the Company of His Forebears
New York Times - United States

Times critic finds "Listening to the pianist Richard Goode playing Bach and Chopin on Sunday was a perfect, soul-soothing tonic after a busy week..."

Both Chopin’s life and his music are sometimes overromanticized; his works are either imbued with a sickly sweet perfume and exaggerated rubato or used as Lisztian showpieces. But Chopin adored the music of Mozart and Bach and reportedly sometimes played “The Well-Tempered Clavier” to warm up before concerts.

When Mr. Goode played Chopin after works by Bach, it made musical sense, and each composer benefited from the diligence of his approach. He played with the clean articulation and voicing essential to Bach’s music, which also highlighted the intricacies and counterpoint of the Chopin selections.

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Young pianist enthralls
The Republican - MassLive.com - Springfield,MA,USA

18 year-old pianist Claire Huangci "brought the audience to its feet with her performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. ..."

A recent Curtis Institute graduate and prize-winner in the 2006 Kosciusko Piano Competition, Huangci proved to be an elegant technician.

She controlled the piano with warm assertion, bringing a broad timbral palette to bear in her execution of Chopin's singular manipulations of the instrument. Neither the bravura passagework general to 19th century piano music nor the whimsical filigree so intimately identified with the Polish master posed any difficulty for Huangci's flying fingers.

The consistency of certain tiny details (mannerisms in the playing of triplets, for example) seemed to reveal a studied expression rather than the appearance of spontaneous extemporization that will surely settle in with ensuing years of immersion in this repertoire.

That said, the fact that composer and player were virtually the same age (Chopin was only 19 when he wrote the piece and 20 when he played the Warsaw premiere), speaks volumes for the value of youthful energy and ardor.

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Pianist Rafal Blechacz displays grace, versatility in thrilling ...
Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com - Kalamazoo,MI,USA

The Chopin Competition winner lives up to the hype at his debut at the prestigious Gilmore Festival....

But a Polish pianist is expected most to have natural affinity with Chopin's music. This proved true with Blechacz performing all 24 of Chopin's Preludes, Op. 28 (1836-1839) -- a "tour de force." The artist elicited totally unique, individual "personality" from each short piece. No. 4 in E Minor was the epitome of sadness, for example, as Blechacz wrung every ounce of wistfulness from the score.

Everyone in the audience had his favorites, and mine included the utterly charming No. 9 in E Major, featuring the pianist's stunning left hand trills, a glorious No. 15 in D-Flat Major and a highly dramatic, affecting last prelude in D Minor, with blistering left-hand playing and dramatic chromatic runs in the right hand.

A genuine surge of approval came afterwards from the audience, leading to a brilliant rendition of a Moszkowski showcase jewel. Clearly, Blechacz had won the hearts of his discerning Gilmore audience.

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Review: Brubeck Braid at Glamour Bar
Shanghaiist - Shanghai,China

Don't know their music, but after the description, of the this piano/cello jazz duo, you may want to check them out!

The two mainly performed pieces from their album twotet/deuxtet including Wash Away (inspired by a dream in which Chopin meets Ray Charles),
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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....

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."

Goode's greatest strength was a consummate ability to convey beautiful musical sense, without injecting a performer's egoistic detractions.

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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

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....

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Fun With Chopin

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

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....

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Radio 3 announces weekend of Chopin

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...

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.

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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.)

[...]

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.

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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....

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.

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.

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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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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.

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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...

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.

"(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.

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The Chopin Currency - April 6, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Chopin: Piano Sonata No 3; Mazurkas Op 59; Barcarolle Op 60 ...
Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom

UK paper gives Gilmore Award winner Ingrid Fliter a vigorous thumbs-up on her new All-Chopin CD:

Ingrid Fliter clearly loves Chopin's music. The warmth of her playing and the lyrical impulse of her interpretations are combined with discretion in matters of dynamics, pianistic decoration and tonal colour to make these pieces flow from her fingers with the spontaneity of someone deeply immersed in the music's idiom.

Fliter's name might not yet be universally familiar here, but it will be. Born in Argentina, she came to prominence two years ago when she received the highly prized Gilmore Award in the United States, previously bestowed on such international artists as Piotr Anderszewski and Leif Ove Andsnes. Now that she is also a BBC New Generation Artist, opportunities to hear her will become more frequent.

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Mindru Katz plays CHOPIN, Vol. I
Audiophile Audition - USA

Review of a revissue by the Israeli pianist that Audiophile Audition calls "A highly personal approach to the composer - less of Horowitz than of [Myeczyeslaw] Horszowski or [Benno] Moiseiwitsch, a combination of implosive technique and fervent devotion." As well as some fevered dreams....

Katz verbally recounts his experience with dreams, especially in relationship to the music of Chopin, “the genius of Chopin and not just the notes of Chopin.” The etude in double-thirds proved troubling to Katz: a dream involving Artur Rubinstein transpired, in which Rubinstein placed Katz’s hand on the keyboard to finger the etude. Somehow, in having practiced and performed the Tchaikovsky Concerto, Katz found the proper fingering for rendering the technique of the Chopin etude. In another dream, one involving a near-death experience, Katz discovered the proper touch and realization for the Funeral March Sonata.....Well-spoken, articulate, and poetically apt, Katz as raconteur and insightful artist makes a formidable combination well worth our undivided attentions.
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Chopin Foundation returns to Barboursville
Orange County Review - Orange,VA,USA

Young Chopin Competition winner to appear at an Orange County vinyard...

The Chopin Foundation of the United States and Premier Virginia Properties are proud to present Jacek Kortus of Poland, the youngest finalist of the 2005 International Chopin Piano Competition, on his world piano tour.

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