....a roundup of Chopiniana: current news, views, reviews, recordings and performances in the runup to the 200th birthday of the matchless Polish keyboard composer.
Showing posts with label Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. Show all posts
"To be honest, a 90-minute documentary about a cemetery sounds — at least on paper — about as exciting as spending 90 minutes in a cemetery. But surprisingly, Forever turns out to be a much-better film than that would suggest....."
Director Heddy Honigmann and cinematographer Robert Alazraki spend much of the 90 minutes capturing the architecture and "personality" of said cemetery, which turns out to be Pere-Lachaise in France.
For those who don't know, the cemetery is the final resting place of such luminaries as Doors frontman Jim Morrison, composer Frederic Chopin, cinematic trickster Georges Melies, actress Simone Signoret, author and critic Marcel Proust, and many, many others. See all stories on this topic
Another improvised opening (by me) in the style of Chopin or Liszt. Very florid and purposely fiery. Recorded some years back---has some tinniness and distortions. Slightly processed to overcome them...
With the ISO, she will perform Frederic Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. Chen sees what’s often called a light orchestral accompaniment as a dialogue between soloist and ensemble.
“It’s sentimental, dramatic and operatic, and it’s, in many ways, like a conversation with a lot of musically folksy elements,” Chen says of the Polish composer’s work. See all stories on this topic
The PR department at Warsaw city council is thinking of throwing pianos out of windows as a public relations exercise to publicise the capital.
During the anti-Tsarist Uprising of 1863, Chopin’s piano was thrown out of the window of his sister’s apartment by the soldiers of the Tsar and smashed on the street below.
The PR Department in the Warsaw City council has come up with an idea of drawing on that historical episode in the promotion of Warsaw to tourists.
Vienna has its Mozart, London has its Sherlock Holmes, why not throw replicas of grand pianos out of the window as a promotion gimmick, Warsaw PR people say....
Preview and profile of pianist Konstantin Lifshitz, as a prelude to his April 10 performances and masterclasses in San Jose...
He's including the 12 Études of Chopin's Opus 25 in preparation for a week of master classes at Aix-en-Provence, and concludes the recital with Brahms' Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. In between he's slipping in Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, the composer's early, bracing venture into atonality. While he commits most of the music he performs to memory, he'll have the Schoenberg sheet music on hand. Lifschitz may be a genius, but he's not foolhardy.
Emanuel Ax comes to Steel City to play and share some thoughts about his "musical first love:"
Ax recalls that he began playing Chopin when he was 7 or 8. "I'm Polish by birth. All Polish pianists play Chopin, quite apart from him being a large part of every pianist's life, really.
"I certainly love Chopin as much as any composer. He was probably my first love in the sense that I also grew up with (Arthur) Rubinstein, who was known to me as 'the Chopin pianist.' He played a lot else marvelously, too."
Ax's family moved to Canada in 1959 and settled in New York City in 1961. After studying at the Juilliard School of Music and Columbia University, he began winning piano competitions. But his career really took off after winning first prize in the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in 1974.
"After I won, he was very kindly. When he came to New York several times a year, he always found a little time for me. We had a few lessons, among them the Chopin F minor Concerto. He had a lot of stuff to say, unbelievably exact and instructive. I got to have dinner with him a few times, too. I was moving in high circles," says the modest pianist.
Chopin and Debussy "are the most astonishingly original composers I know, Ax says. "With Beethoven, you see it's incredible music, but you can trace connections to Mozart and Haydn writing at the time. Chopin comes from Warsaw and explodes on the scene. It's a pretty revolutionary way of hearing music." See all stories on this topic
Shot at the world famous Pere-Lachaise cemetery, the largest in Paris, the film explores the thoughts and feelings of those who have come to the gravesites to pay tribute to famous people such as Chopin, Modigliani, Apollonaire, Balzac, Proust and Oscar Wilde as well as ordinary folk who lived and loved and have been remembered. It is a moving experience that engages both the mind and the heart.
The film opens with the story of pianist Yoshino Kimura, a young Asian woman who performs the work of Frederic Chopin as a means of connecting with her deceased father who loved his music. Scenes of Kimura playing the pensive melodies of Chopin's Nocturnes in concert are shown as the camera offers loving close ups of the pianist, the emotion revealed in her eyes.
Although she's only 20 years old, the Asian-American Kudo is a veteran of numerous international competitions. During the past three years alone, Kudo is the 2007 winner of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, too second prize at the 2005 U.S. National Chopin and was the only American finalist at the 2005 Chopin Piano Competition in Poland. She has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Fukui Symphony Orchestra and numerous other U.S. ensembles.
From the "Fly Funky Diva" blog, memories of a Miss America with some major Chopin mojo....
Marjorie's piano rendition of this Chopin masterpiece went down as one of the most brilliant talent performances in Miss America history. She also looked incredible! Marjorie Vincent was crowned Miss America this year making her the fourth african-american woman to hold the title.
No, it's *not* Lang Lang; this time Yundi Li is being compared to "Macedonian wonder Simon Trpceski:"
Beneath the metallic glint of the Steinway was emptiness, like puff pastry without any custard filling.
Li has recorded Chopin before, and very beautifully at that, but his performances of a Nocturne and four Mazurkas from Op. 33 were not even phoned in, but text-messaged in, with vacuous emoticons substituting for the real thing.
It is possible that Li was having a bad night - or a bad first half. But I didn’t wait to find out more. Not when Trpceski, who has performed dazzlingly with both the Symphony and Music Toronto several times before, beckoned.
By the end of his strange and sharp-edged pairing of the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante by Frédéric Chopin, I just wanted to get away. ... See all stories on this topic
A meditative, strangely beautiful documentary about the importance of art in life, Forever is set principally at France's fabled Pere-Lachaise cemetery. At Pere-Lachaise, visitors show up daily to pay their respects at the graves of everyone from Chopin and Moliere to Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Although running just 98 minutes, director Heddy Honigmann's film could conceivably go on for hours, even days. (It would make a fantastic gallery installation piece.)
Profile of Nashville singer-songwriter Chopinaphile Brooke Waggoner:
Brooke Waggoner may be the only singer/songwriter in Nashville who cites Chopin as an influence, never mind both Chopin and ELO. So she is not a typical Nashville musician; she's from Louisiana but she's not a typical Louisiana musician ...
From the "Failed Misanthrope's" latest blog entry, containing lots of Chopin:
I’m posting this because as a pseudo / wanna-be / dilettante classical music critic-listener, I feel that some sort of full disclosure is needed. Aside from a few sad facts—I was not a music major, I don’t play any instrument, I know very few musicians—these are the classical albums I listen to:
Chopin Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 and Complete Orchestral Works, Krystian Zimmerman, Claudio Arrau, etc., pianists (Deutsche Grammophon, 2 CD set) 81. Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1, Liszt Piano Concerto No. ... The Failed Misanthrope - http://theamateurmisanthrope.blogspot.com/
Chopin Music of the Day: The "Autoharp" Etude: (Op. 10 No. 11 in E-flat)
Chopin Project concert series, Artistic Director Arthur Greene plays gives a performance of the tricky Etude in E-flat Major, Op. 10, No. 11, a piece that might have been inspired by the zithers (early autoharps) that Chopin heard in his Polish homeland...
