....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 figure skating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label figure skating. Show all posts

Friday, March 21, 2008

The Chopin Currency: March 21, 2008


Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

At 90, 'Piano Jazz' personality going strong
Roanoke Times - Roanoke,VA,USA

Ageless pianist, author, and radio host Marian McPartland celebrates her 90th birthday, in grand style at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. She looks back on a career that began with Chopin:

From the very beginning of her musical life, McPartland has been easily able to absorb music. She learned to play piano mostly from listening to her mother play Chopin at home and seeking out the melodies and chords on her own. She received formal training at Guildhall School of Music in her native Great Britain when still in her teens, but the lure of jazz proved too strong to resist a gig playing in a four-piano vaudeville act. "My parents were horrified," she remembers. "But I was in show business now and that was that."

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Asada gets up to grab gold
Yahoo! Eurosport - London,UK

Tabith and Agosto falter, but Chopin serves Japan's Mao Asada well at the World Figure Skating Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden....

Asada slipped as she prepared for what was supposed to the first jump in her routine to Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, sliding into the boards instead of ...

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Misc. Chopiniana:

Three Deilmann Ships Sail the Elbe River this Summer
About - News & Issues - New York,NY,USA

Did you know there was a Chopin Cruise Liner? Now you do...

The MV Katharina von Bora and MV Frederic Chopin will cruise between Berlin and Prague, and the MV Dresden will sail between Hamburg and Dresden. ...

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Chopin Currency - March 18th, 2008


Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Belbin, Agosto taking a classical approach
Boston Globe - United States



Chopin turns out to be the missing ingredient in the ice-dancing tandem's Quest for Gold....

[Tanith] Belbin and [Ben] Agosto are the most successful dance team the US has had, and the Olympic silver medalists seem to break new ground every season. But when coach Igor Shpilband suggested they consider a classical piece for this year's free dance, they worried it might be too much of a stretch.

They turned down some Bach he suggested. When he came back with Chopin, though, they agreed to try it, and the flowing, romantic program has turned out to be the perfect showcase for their skills. It highlights their chemistry, expression, and speed, their traditional strengths. But it has also allowed them to show a maturity and depth of emotion they didn't have three or four years ago.


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Prince of the piano worthy of crown
Albany Times Union - Albany,NY,USA

Hey! It's another Yundi Li review!

"The 25-year-old piano prince then caught the audience's attention with his Chopin: four of the Mazurkas, followed by the well-known Nocturne in E flat and "Andante Spianato" and "Grande Polonaise." The Mazurkas are more relaxed and reflective pieces and quickly showed Yundi is more than a technically proficient virtuoso. He was particularly effective in the fourth number, which recalls the work of Robert Schumann, a friend of the composer."

The young Chinese musician won the International Chopin Competition some years ago, and has made four recordings for the prestigious Deutsche Gramophon ...
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Lang Lang delights, confounds with his individualism
Philadelphia Inquirer - Philadelphia,PA,USA

Hey! It's another Lang Lang review!

Sure, his recital of Schubert, Bartók, Debussy and Chopin was full of strangely mannered playing. But there's a trade-off: His ideas, all his own, are convincingly expressed...

....Here, on this night, marginalization of classical music was a specious myth. After a particularly convulsive and artless reading of Chopin's Polonaise in A flat major (Op. 53), "Heroic," an audience of seniors, teens, hipsters, nerds, 20ish Asian girls, aficionados, newbies, and a surprising number of 6- to 9-year-olds jumped to their feet. Whistles and cheers. Flowers. Flashbulbs.

Who else on the classical stage can claim as close a connection with as diverse a public? Right now, maybe no one.
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Chopin Videos:


Artur Rubinstein Plays Chopin Polonaise “Heroic”
By admin
Lovely excerpt from the 1947 movie Carnegie Hall. Great close-ups of Rubinstein's fingers in action, though the music is quite obviously dubbed...


From picture “Carnegie Hall”. ShareThis.
Next VDO - http://nextvdo.com/







Literary Chopin:

♯Six
By Frederic Francois Chopin(Frederic Francois Chopin)

Another installment from the pianopoet...

[Private//Easily Hackable] I have been thinking about that world again....The world I once called just a passing dream. Traveling in that world, I faded faster than it. It was mostly due to my physical state more so than my mental state ...
The piano is his way of life - http://pianopoet.livejournal.com/



Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Chopin Currency - Jan. 27, 2008

Pianist to continue long history of performances in city
NewsOK.com (subscription) - Oklahoma City,OK,USA
Ohlsson remains the only American pianist to have won the Chopin competition. Schumann's 1845 piano concerto straddles the classical and romantic periods. ...
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Belbin and Agosto take fifth straight dance title
Sports Network - USA
1 in the world in dance rankings, picked up 216.07 points during the free dance thanks to a program featuring the music of Frederic Chopin. ...

About Chopin2010

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....is a roundup of all things Chopin leading up to the 200th anniversary of the matchless Polish composer for the piano in March 2010.