The only Chopin I listen to now
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
I grew up listening to Rubinstein and Horowitz play Chopin, followed by the Russians Richter and Gilels. The next generation included Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy. I reached a mid-life point where I wondered if there was much more to say in Chopin and practically gave up listening.
This was not altogether a false perception. …
Read on here.
Or in The Critic here.
In Czech here.
En francais ici.
Suggesting that Chopin is only suitable for post-coital bliss or Polish nationals really is a disgrace to your musical awareness. What ignorance.
I completely agree. The inherent delicacy, grace, tragedy, melancholy, inherent in so much of Chopin’s work speaks volumes to the human condition. Such dismissive mischaracterization of his music truly offends me.
There are many more great Chopinists to listen to- Marry Perahia, Ivan Moracev, Yevgeny Kissin, Arrau, Pollini, Pires, Zimerman- partial list.
Rafal Blechacz
Cortot, Michelangeli
“….Marry Perahia, Moracev(!), Kissin, Arrau….(etc).. Shurely sir, that would be the height of polygamy.
A great, but non-Polish, Chopinist is the Australian pianist Roger Woodward. The finest Chopin I ever heard was a recital he gave in Brisbane in the 1980s.
Gilels? Sounds like namedropping. Gilels recorded one Chopin LP.
“A certain introverted sentimentality and post-coital sadness”?! That’s the take on one of the greatest composers ever? With all due respect, there’s more musical genius and content in a short Chopin prelude, mazurka, or other miniature, than in four hours of Wagner, or a whole Mahler symphony. (And I enjoy Wagner and Mahler.) There is indeed a school of Chopin playing that likes to emphasize the purported effeminate”consumptive” nature which his music, wrongly interpreted, invites sometimes. I just listened to a couple of mazurkas with Fliter, and though beautifully played, she seems to belong to this school, and uses excessive rubatos, which is probably why she’s recommended here. Try Pollini, Sokolov, Perahia, Ohlsson, to name only a few of the truly great Chopin players of the post-Rubinstein generation, or, among the younger ones, Yulianna Avdeeva, who should get much more credit.
I remember hearing Ingrid Fliter in concert years ago. I hadn’t heard of her at the time, but never forgot her.
Yes. I remember a very good F minor in Liège several years ago.
Chopin? Maurizio Pollini and Charles Rosen (the latter unfortunately did not record very much) stand for “precision and soul”.
What a shame it is to show your lack of empathy towards both Chopin and those past giants who played his music with mastery. I’m sorry for you. Hopefully your readers realize this reductive kind of view is not the way to go about this for most of us. However, to each his own.
Norman, I can’t make out whether you wrote this to just be provocative or just were so moved by Ingrid Fliter’s latest album that you felt, put other performances by many of today’s artists , in the shade. To disparage all musicians playing Chopin is not very good critiquing and gives us nothing about what you liked about Fliter’s playing.
Chopin’s music stands by itself rather than existing only by grace of its performers.
There is much more to say in Chopin if you look to the past. Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Ignaz Friedman, Mischa Levitzki, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Jascha Spivakovsky, Josef and Rosina Lhevinne, Marian Filar, Dinu Lipatti, Raoul Koczalski, Joseph Villa, Marguerite Long, and many others. There’s incredible variety in how to play Chopin at a high artistic level.
Chopin Mazurkas, you say? Fou Ts’ong, Janina Fialkowska, Frederic Chiu, for a few best less obvious namechecks..
Not rising to the provocation regarding Chopin’s purported limitations, as we know that SD does love its hyperbolic throw-downs.
“Chopin does not have much more to say in his music beyond a certain introverted sentimentality and post-coital sadness.”
I saw better music reviews in my small-town college newspaper.
Norman, Thanks for bringing her to my attention for the first time. What a discovery! Going through the available material on line, I’m astonished by how good she is, whether in the Bartok two piano/percussion sonata with Kocsis (astonishing!) to a wonderful Chopin Concerto with the Madison, Wis. Symphony. She’s a worthy talent to be included among the best…I trust that her career path was dictated by her choices.