The Chopin Currency - March 17, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Lauded opera legend Viardot honored in tailor-made show
Examiner.com - USA

Rave review for theatrical/music program dedicated to Chopin amie Pauline Viardot (see previous entry):

Their combined brilliance is astounding. Two of America’s greatest living mezzos, Frederica von Stade and Marilyn Horne, are about to join forces with superb Verdi baritone Vladimir Chernov, stage director and former San Francisco Opera General Manager Lofti Mansouri, fast-rising gifted soprano Melody Moore and San Francisco Symphony’s own Peter Grunberg to present two evenings of “Pauline Viardot and Friends.” These will be nights to remember.

So great was her artistry that Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Saint-Saëns, Schumann and Fauré all composed or dedicated works for her. ...
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Li builds slowly, dazzles fans in Troy
Schenectady Gazette - Schenectady,NY,USA

More of the Yundi Li - Lang Lang traveling road show. First, Yundi Li at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall:

"Chopin’s famous Nocturne in E-flat Major, known to every pupil who’s played Chopin, was interesting in his softer tone, blurred images and introspective mood. Rather than knock out the final page as most pianists do, Li spun out the notes with a fluid nonchalance but kept the dynamic within the pensive range. It was a rather lovely choice."

In four of Chopin’s Mazurkas from his Op. 33, his tone had a hard edge, but his pacing, technical cleanness, emphasis of the inner voices and pedaling were ...
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Subtleties to Showmanship: Pianistic Duality on Display
New York Times - United States

....and Lang Lang plays Manhattan:

A particularly telling example of this duality was Mr. Lang’s single encore, Chopin’s Étude in E (Op. 10, No. 3). He played its outer sections with a ...
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The Chopin Currency - March 16, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Chinese pianist hits all right notes in concert
Colorado Springs Gazette - Colorado Springs,CO,USA

Glowing review of pianist Joyce Yang's appearance with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic...

But it was her performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 that proved that she's also an assured and original interpreter. Above all, she's a master of ...
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MEET VIARDOT
San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA

Preview of "Pauline Viardot and Friends," a full-length theatrical celebration of Viardot's life and art presented by San Francisco Performances and hosted by Marilyn Horne:

"...Pauline Viardot, the brilliant and charismatic mezzo-soprano who conquered the stages - and boudoirs - of 19th century Europe over the course of a long and varied career. Who knows of her today?

Her intellectual gifts - she spoke six languages fluently - brought her the friendship of many of the leading cultural figures of the day, including Chopin, ...
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Chopin a la Midi:

Etude #1 (Chopin) revised

MIDI version of Chopin's Op. 10 No. 1 Etude:

One more pass on this one, this time with an enhanced bass part. I don't know how I would percuss. this one, but I may revisit this in the future. Trying to work out the EQ and compression, but I am still new at the FL Studio controls. ...
bandamp - http://forum.bandamp.com/

The Chopin Currency - Ides of March Edition

Chopin Video of the Day:

Kurikinton Fox - F.Chopin - fantasy impromptu in Guitar!!!

Not bad at all!

This is Fantasy Impromptu AKA Gino's piece. These guys did this in g-tar...Amazing:D.
music is everything, everything is music - http://fluteguitar.multiply.com/

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Concert pianist favourite returns
Huddersfield Examiner - Huddersfield,UK

Local favorita Evgenia Rubinova returns to play the Chopin First Concerto at the Huddersfield Town Hall...

In an evening full of festivity and celebration, she will be playing works by Shostakovich, Chopin and Prokofiev. Shostakovich’s Festival Overture premiered ...
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A Classic Contrast (Or So It Seems)
Washington Post - United States

Washington Post critic Anne Midgette weighs the consecutive recital appearances by Yundi Li and Lang Lang, and decide maybe they're not so different after all...

Tuesday's concert at the Kennedy Center bore out the idea (formed at several concerts over the past few years) that Lang Lang, after the stunning promise of his 2001 Carnegie Hall debut, has become one of the most maddening pianists on Earth. He can make any musical passage crass, coarse and bombastic. He can also create moments of breathtaking beauty. And a listener never knows which is coming next.....The Bartok sonata, played from sheet music with a spasmodic hysteria that produced the aural equivalent of dry heaves in places, and Chopin's A-flat Polonaise, of which he made an unequivocal hash, shredding the whole line of the piece in tantrums of pedal and fingerwork.

At Strathmore the following night, Yundi Li appeared a contrast indeed: well-bred, elegant, demure, the epitome of good taste, so sober as to be a little boring until he unleashed some virtuoso fireworks of his own. He opened with a supremely classical take on Mozart's K.330, crisp and light, and continued with a selection of his calling-card composer, Chopin, playing the Op. 33 mazurkas, the nocturne Op. 9, No. 2, and the showy Op. 22 "Grande Polonaise Brillante," with a detour into the Liszt/Schumann "Widmung" to underscore the lyrical singing lines of his playing. There is nothing effete about his Chopin; it is sensitive but strong.

.....

if both are expressing the same thing, Yundi Li is expressing it less colorfully. His program was the more conventional, the one we are supposed to like.But thinking it over afterward, I found I had, as a listener, been more engaged by my annoyance at Lang Lang than my distant approval of Yundi Li.

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Another Chopin Video

Cecile Licad Playing Chopin Ballade G-Moll Op.23
Philippines' Finest Cecile Licad playing Chopin (pronounced as Sho-pan) Ballade G-moll Op.
Everyone Has a Dark Side... I... - http://alexskywalker.multiply.com/

Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Celebrities play chess
By Nikita

Look at the company Fryderyk is keeping at the Chessboard..

Artists and musicians: Bono (U2), Madonna, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Guy Ritchie, Frank Sinatra, Salvador Dali, Ludwig van Beethoven, David Bowie, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Sting, Enrico Caruso, Ray Charles, Cher, Frederic Chopin, ...
Chessalee - http://chessaleeinlondon.wordpress.com

♯Five
By Frederic Francois Chopin(Frederic Francois Chopin)

Another installment from the pianopoet...(must be 14 to enter site...)

Am I truly happy with what I did? Thinking back on it now, I'm not so sure I am. I understand what all of us went through, the trials and tribulations we surpassed to get where we were. Then for everything to finally reach the end...the ...
The piano is his way of life - http://pianopoet.livejournal.com/

The Chopin Currency - March 14, 2008

Kicking against convention: a scene from The Concert, a clever and ...
This is London - London,England,UK

Another one of Jerome Robbins' famous interpretations of Chopin, from the New York City Ballet performance at the London Coliseum....(be sure to read the Comments for an opposing viewpoint)

The Concert, for example, is a clever and poignant take on Chopin that gently mocks the absurdities of ballet and the suggestibility of music. ...
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'I Think of Us as a Musical Species'
Spiegel Online - Berlin,Germany

Chopin is on the mind of noted neurologist and author ("Musicophilia") Dr. Oliver Sacks...

Oliver Sacks: A Chopin mazurka is coming to me. It is one in B flat major, and I feel an itch in my hands to play it. I can sort of see the keyboard in ...
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Lang Lang @ Kennedy Center
ionarts by Charles T. Downey | Thursday, March 13, 2008

D.C.-area arts & culture blog weighs in on Lang Lang's Monday night recital: Praise for Bartok; horror for Chopin:

With the final work, Chopin's A-flat polonaise (op. 53), and the encores, Lang seemed to be making up for lost time, trying to inject a whole evening's virtuosity into the space of a few minutes. The Chopin came across like a Duchamp-esque rewrite of a familiar masterpiece, played so fast that all of Chopin's operatic relish of bel canto flourishes was simply steamrollered over in the process. The first encore, a Chopin étude (op. 10, no. 3), was calm and sad, with a blindingly fast middle section.

Martha Argerich Plays Chopin: The Legendary 1965 Recording
By admin0

Superlatives for a long-suppressed recording out on CD:

Lost is Found, finally
This Argerich Chopin performance, recorded by EMI in 1965 while she was actually under contract to DG is formidable for an artist so early in her career. Both the artistry and sound are superb and it’s a shame we fans had to wait so long for this recording to appear. These Chopin performances completely justify the competition judges decision to award her the grand prize at the 1965 Warsaw International Chopin Competition. It’s a collection must have!

Chopin himself would have gone into ecstasy listening to Martha Argerich play his music. It is impossible to find anyone else with such incredible, awesome, impossible ability to impart such emotional energy to a piano. ...
Seek & Buy Audio CD - http://vinylrecords.890m.com/wordpress

♯Four
By Frederic Francois Chopin(Frederic Francois Chopin)

Another "journal entry" from our favorite poet of the piano....(note: must be 14 to enter site...)

So it would seem I have been using my days to find inspiration for my music, and have yet to come across any such inspiration on my part. It is rather down hearting to not be able to find anything I can use as inspiration for my music; ...
The piano is his way of life - http://pianopoet.livejournal.com/

The Chopin Currency - March 13, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Pianist’s intense preparation and talent have brought him global ...
Schenectady Gazette - Schenectady,NY,USA

Another preview for the current recital tour of 2000 Chopin Competition winner Yundi Li, who'll play Sunday March 16th at the acoustically-rich Troy (NY) Savings Bank Music Hall. In this installment, we learn:

His role models for pianists were Maurizio Pollini of Italy and Krystian Zimerman of Poland, both of them previous winners of the Chopin competition who had gone on to major careers.

Since his incredible win at the 2000 International Chopin Competition at age 18 when he was the first competitor to take home a gold medal in 15 years and ...
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Unremarkable night salvaged by Israeli's rendition of Schubert
Ha'aretz - Tel Aviv,Israel

Meanwhile, at the Artur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv, the local critic is more impressed by an old film of the master in action than any of the flesh-and-blood contestants....

The second contestant, Rem Urasin of Moscow, strived to project an especially "deep" message, yet the result was boredom. The mazurkas of Chopin proved heavy and artificial, the antithesis of the Rubinstein approach, of which I was reminded while in the vestibule of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The museum was screening footage of Rubinstein leading a class in 1979 at the "Mishkenot Sha'ananim" in Jerusalem. It is worthwhile to stop and observe the old craftsman in action, demanding "simplicity" and emphasizing articulative rendition that needed to stem from genuine, internal emotion. For him and for musicians that managed to connect with him, such comprehensive instructions contained meaning.

The mazurkas of Chopin proved heavy and artificial, the antithesis of the Rubinstein approach, of which I was reminded while in the vestibule of the Tel ...
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Konstantin Igumnov = CHOPIN: Mazurka No. 33 in B Major, Op. 56, No ...
Audiophile Audition - USA

Another reissue review:

Another in the series The Russian Piano Tradition, this installment celebrates the artistry of Konstantin Nikolayevich Igumnov (1873-1948)--Moscow Conservatory teacher of notables Jakob Flier, Lev Oborin, and Bella Davidovich--with inscriptions Igumnov made 1935-1947 in fair to moderately passable sound. ....Chopin’s B Major Mazurka, which despite the tinny sound that haunts all Soviet inscriptions, reveals a fine sense of legato and good inner pulsation.

Igumnov claimed supremacy in the romantic repertory, particularly in the music of Chopin, Schumann, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky. ...
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

Chord Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Idolator - New York,NY,USA

More about musicologist Dmitri Tyomoczko's intriguing video linking math, chords, Chopin, and spatial relationships.....and just how is it that scientists keep linking Chopin and Deep Purple?

There, he shows a Chopin chord progression represented as movement around a circle, and since a 12-point circle is a clock, it's easy to follow. ...
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CHOPIN-WALTZ

A blogger's selection of favorite Chopin waltzes on YouTube...

Sergio Fiorentino plays Chopin Waltz Op 18 (GRAND WALTZ)--LEARN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXqfMj7xj5M Yundi Li plays Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 --LEARN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvxS_bJ0yOU Horowitz plays Chopin Ballade 1 ...
NONIK'S SITE - http://ininonik.multiply.com/

Loving Coq - Rooster - Ballet Review
By Vance(Vance)

A Toronto blogger weighs in on the National Ballet of Canada's "32" [sic] Preludes" - apparently too dazzled by the outfits to note that there are actually only 24 of 'em....

And then there's the first piece, 32 Preludes by Chopin that is weird and wonderful and modern and abstract and very very cool. Did I mention everyone is in tights? Tights that are transparent and only strategically covered by small ...
Tapeworthy - http://tapeworthy.blogspot.com/

The Chopin Currency - March 12, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Method & madness: The oddities of the virtuosi
Independent - London,England,UK

This just in: A lot of great pianists of the ages have been more than a little crackers. A dissection on the eccentricities and downright madness of Shura Cherkassy, Glenn Gould, Artur Benedetto Michalangeli, Vladimir Horowitz, and a host of lesser knows, including...

Some pianists based brilliant careers on seeming mad, when they weren't, the most notable being the diminutive Viennese "pianissimist" Vladimir de Pachmann, aka "the Chopinzee", whose antics prompted George Bernard Shaw to write of his "pantomimic performance, with accompaniments by Chopin"

Yet his Chopin and Schumann had such panache that dozens of live recordings have been issued since his death. I regret never having heard Arturo Benedetti ...
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Nanowires prefer Deep Purple
ABC Science Online - Australia'

In the brand-new world of silicon nanowires, Chopin lags behind Deep Purple in promoting their growth - though it seems there are "kinks" to work out....

Parlevliet tested the effect of Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water', Chopin's 'Nocturne Opus 9 No 1', Josh Abrahams' 'Addicted to Bass', Rammstein's 'Das ...
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WEST SIDE STORY SUITE – Standing Ovation for San Francisco Ballet ...
SanFranciscoSentinel.com - San Francisco,CA,USA

Account of San Francisco Ballet program currently in production that includes Jerome Robbins' "In the Night," danced to a recording of three Chopin Nocturnes by Artur Rubinstein...(Opus 9 No. 2, Opus 27 No. 1, Opus 55, No. 1 and No. 2.)

The evening includes three separate works featuring the music of Leonard Bernstein and Frédéric Chopin. 2008 marks the 90th birthdays of Bernstein and ...
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"Her Name Is Sabine,"
IFC - USA

Review of new indy film by French actress Sandrine Bonnaire "making a patient, respectful, thoroughly unnarcissistic documentary about her own handicapped sister, and stumping for policy change as she considers painful mysteries about family and the passage of time in the process. "Her Name Is Sabine" (2007) is a simple, unpretentious piece of work..."

... teen and young adult, she was different, "off," but lucid, literate, energetic and capable of playing Chopin. She went without diagnosis for decades. ...
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The Chopin Currency - March 11, 2008

Chopin News, Reviews, and Previews:

Cellist Oh Ah-mi's Courageous Crossover
Korea Times - South Korea

The world's first self-described "crossover cellist," breaks conventions by adding dance moves to the still-standing cello performance. “I am inspired by Vanessa Mae’s passionate playing and Beyonce’s strong stage presence" she says...

`It's really demanding, so I just have to practice that much more,'' she said. Though not a trained dancer, Oh enjoys dancing and worked with a choreographer to create moves. In her first showcase performance at Seongnam Art Center tonight, her cello will be her dance partner as she waltzes to ``Chopin's Party of Dupin,'' which was inspired by the Waltze (Op. 64 No. 2).`\

Two were inspired by well-known Chopin and Dvorak music. ``(The composer and I) discussed our work a lot. I wanted to reinterpret the music and make them ...
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Review: Traces - Les 7 Doigts de la Main
The Dominion Post - Wellington,New Zealand

Chopin cheek-by-jowl with Chinese acrobats and skateboarders....

There's endearing Chopin played live on a wonky piano, and a girl made of rubber who reads on (and through, over, under, and off) an even wonkier armchair. ...
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Chopin in the Blogosphere:

The Geometry Of Music
Partyvibes - Netherlands

From a Dutch blog: Chopin the cubist's delight, via Princeton professor Dmitri Tymoczko:

Tymoczko looked at the piece and watched the composition’s motion through his geometrical space, he saw that Chopin was moving in a systematic way among the different layers of the four-dimensional cubes. “It’s almost as if he’s an improviser with a set of rules and set of constraints,” Tymoczko says.

Music theorists have long found Chopin’s E minor prelude puzzling. , Although the chord progressions sound smooth to the ear, they don’t quite follow the ...
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Rajka - Group 3 - Tiny Murders
By seaglassgirl

To what nationality does Chopin truly belong? From an online writing workshop....

I am back in my chair, with the half-cup of Cappuccino. I put my feet up and listen, again, to Chopin. I wonder: to whom does he belong? To everyone, to no one. Another soul who transcends us all and makes us whole. Content, I listen.
Opening the Circle - http://writingfromtheheart.wordpress.com