Frédéric François Chopin

This unique set has been drawn together by using only the compositions that Chopin personally accepted for publication and to which he assigned the opus number by his own hand (except for the opus appendix by J.Fontana, 66 to 70). The opus numbers, starting from number 23 is, with the odd exception, chronological. With many accolades to her name, Tatiana Shebanova has gained worldwide recognition, She has frequently performed in major concert halls in Europe, Russia, Canada, South Africa and Japan. One Japanese critic wrote “I strongly believe that Tatiana Shebanova is the best interpreter of Chopin’s music”

With his exceptional gift for melody and his highly sophisticated and subtle sense of harmony, Frederic Chopin created some of the most Romantic piano music ever written. This collection offers a widely varied selection of these beautiful and much loved pieces, from the calm introspective mood of the Nocturnes, through the pure joy of the Waltzes to the grand passion of the “Revolutionary” Etude in C minor, the Fantaisie-impromptu and the “Heroic” Polonaise.

2010 ushers in the 200th anniversary of the birth of Chopin. This disc of delightful dance miniatures captures the unique style of a composer whose output in this form numbered over one hundred pieces. Award winning pianist, Karol Radziwonowicz, brings his technical brilliance to this recording making this DUX release a fine start to the Chopin year.

A completely reworked version of the 1999 DG Edition, now split between DG and Decca recordings.

17 CDs, non-limited, in capbox.

Pollini recordings backbone of collection (Etudes, Sonatas, Polonaises, Scherzos)

New DG Highlights: Zimerman's Concertos, Blechacz's Preludes, Pires's Nocturnes

New from Decca: Arrau - Piano Works with orchestra, Ashkenazy - Mazurkas and Waltzes.

Available for the Chopin 200th anniversary in March 2010.

Already a star in Japan, piano-wonder (Hamburger Abendblatt) Alice Sara Ott will conquer the entire world of music with her International Deutsche Grammophon debut album – the complete Chopin Waltzes

This collection of immortal piano gems fits Ott’s talents like the proverbial glove. Her colorful, vital playing reveals the spectrum of her artistry and musicality

Ott’s triumphant recital at Munich’s Herkulessaal in January 2007, performing Beethoven and Liszt, occasioned the Süddeutsche Zeitung to rave that “Ott lends a personal, almost overwhelming poetic charm to this splendid music, transporting her listeners into ecstatic delight”. Her recent concerts in Germany this summer led to similar raving reviews, spear-headed by Hamburger Abendblatt which called her a pianist of devilish talent

While there is no composition by Chopin that does not involve the piano, the cello is the only other instrument for which he wrote any significant music. His first effort was a polonaise written in 1829 when he was visiting the home of Prince Radziwill, governor of the Principality of Poznan and himself a composer and cellist of sorts. Writing to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski in November, he is rather dismissive of his ‘alla polacca’ describing it as ‘nothing more than a brilliant drawing-room piece suitable for the ladies’. He hoped that the Prince’s daughter, Wanda, would practise the piano part (he was supposed to be giving her lessons) in which case she must have been an accomplished pianist, though her father would not have found the cello part over-taxing. The following year Chopin added an introduction, inspired by his friendship in Vienna with the cellist Joseph Merk. The Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for piano and cello Op 3 was dedicated to Merk. Carl Czerny (1791–1857) produced a piano solo version of the work but in the 1980s an arrangement by Chopin himself was unearthed.

The Piano Trio in G minor Op 8 was composed a year earlier, in 1828, for private performance at ‘Antonin’, the home of Prince Radziwill. This is Chopin’s only example of writing for the violin, and it shows a surprising lack of flair (in the first movement, for instance, the violinist rarely moves out of first position). It is a genial work in four movements (Allegro con fuoco, Scherzo, Adagio sostenuto and an Allegretto finale) but there is little of the interplay between the three instruments of the kind that makes the trios of Beethoven, Schubert and Hummel such a delight. Chopin seems hampered by the confines of classical procedures, working ideas through dutifully rather than with individuality and imagination, though various commentators have praised the Trio as ‘one of the most perfect and, unfortunately, most neglected of Chopin’s works’ (Charles Willeby) and wondered why ‘so graceful and winning a piece is not more of a staple in the concert hall’ (Emanuel Ax).

In the chronology of works for cello and piano, the Grand Duo in E major on themes from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable comes next. The opera had a sensational premiere in Paris on 21 November 1831. Set in thirteenth-century Sicily, the libretto, ‘in which the grotesque is carried to the point of absurdity’ (Kobbé), was saved by Meyerbeer’s brilliant score, and the work made a fortune for the Paris Opéra. Its themes attracted dozens of composers including Thalberg, Kalkbrenner, Herz and Liszt. Chopin was commissioned by his publisher Schlesinger to write this potpourri, a brilliant display piece of the kind that was so popular in the Parisian salons of the time. After the piano’s Largo introduction, among the themes used are the Romanza and the chorus ‘Non pietà’ from Act 1, and ‘Le mie cure ancor dei cielo’ (Act 5). Composed in 1831, it is one of only four Chopin works published in his lifetime without an opus number and the only one to be composed in collaboration, in this case with his friend the cellist August Franchomme.

‘I write a little and cross out a lot’, Chopin wrote to his sister during the composition of his final major work, the Cello Sonata in G minor Op 65, written in Paris in 1845 and 1846. ‘Sometimes I am pleased with it, sometimes not. I throw it into a corner and then pick it up again.’ No work of his gave him more trouble, as manifested by the extensive sketches. It was the last one to be published during his lifetime, written when his health was failing. The four movements (Allegro moderato, Scherzo, Largo and Allegro) show how far Chopin had developed in his ability to form a closely integrated sonata structure, with ideas developing from a variety of short but related motifs.

For some of Chopin’s contemporaries it was a difficult work to grasp. Moscheles found ‘passages which sound to me like someone preluding on the piano, the player knocking at the door of every key and clef, to find if any melodious sounds were at home’, yet he thought well enough of it to make an arrangement for piano four hands. The Allegro moderato, especially, puzzled even Chopin’s intimates—players today find it the most problematic in terms of balance—and he omitted the movement at the premiere given by himself and Franchomme, the work’s dedicatee, on 16 February 1848. This first movement clearly had some hidden significance for him. Various commentators have noted in it thematic references from Schubert’s Winterreise, notably the initial phrase of ‘Gute Nacht’, the opening song. The subject of the song-cycle, the disappointed lover in despair at leaving his beloved, would seem to reflect the circumstances of Chopin’s life when he was writing the Sonata. There is evidence that he turned to Winterreise at the time of his separation from George Sand. Could that be why the first movement was not played at the premiere? Is that why on his deathbed he asked Franchomme to play it but could not bear to hear more than the opening bars?

Described prosaically, Chopin’s Preludes Op 28 are a cycle of twenty-four short pieces in all the major and minor keys paired through tonal relatives (the major keys and their relative minors) progressing in the cycle of fifths. Thus the opening C major Prelude is followed by one in A minor, G major (No 3) by that in E minor (No 4), then on to D major–B minor, and so forth. Seven of them last less than a minute; only three last longer than three minutes. But it is hard to think of any piano music less deserving of such pedestrian characterization than these miniature gems, which would, on their own, have ensured Chopin’s immortality.

In Bach’s time a prelude usually preceded something else, whether a fugue (as in his many organ works and the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier) or dance movements in a suite, although Bach himself also composed short independent preludes for the keyboard. By the early nineteenth century it was common practice for pianists to improvise briefly as a prelude to their performance, an opportunity to loosen the fingers and focus the mind, and this tradition spawned several sets of Preludes encompassing all the major and minor keys, including examples from Hummel (1814), Cramer (1818), Kalkbrenner (1827), Moscheles (1827) and Kessler (1834), whose set is dedicated to Chopin.

These antecedents rarely stray beyond brief technical exercises. Not for the first time, Chopin took an existing form and raised it to a new level, establishing the solo Prelude as a miniature tone poem conveying myriad emotions and moods. They in turn provided the model for the Preludes of Heller (Op 81), Alkan (Op 31), Cui (Op 64), Busoni (Op 37) and Rachmaninov (Op 3 No 2, Op 23 and Op 32), all of which also embrace all twenty-four keys.

Chopin’s first essay in the genre was an independent Prelude in A flat major (composed in 1834 but not published until 1918) although not so titled by him (he gave it only a tempo indication). Here, as in several of the Op 28 Preludes, there are certain affinities with some of Bach’s Preludes, for instance the Prelude in D major from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier. However, Chopin never includes any specifically fugal or canonic passages; his counterpoint emerges as a natural part of the musical texture. In the B minor Prelude, for example, the bass serves the dual function of melodic line and harmonic support. It is noteworthy that Chopin took with him his copy of the Well-Tempered Clavier on his ill-fated trip to Majorca in 1838 with George Sand. It was here that he put the finishing touches to the cycle that had occupied him on and off since 1836. The final Prelude was completed on 22 January 1839.

Some of the Preludes have attracted descriptive titles. Chopin would not have approved: none of the music is programmatic, attractive though it may be to think of the best-known of them—No 15 in D flat major, nicknamed ‘The Raindrop’—as depicting the steady drip-drip-drip of rain on the roof of their lodging in Valldemosa. No 4 in E minor and No 6 in B minor, known to all young pianists, were played on the organ at Chopin’s funeral. The tempestuous No 16 in B flat minor ranks among the most treacherous to play of all his works, while No 20 in C minor inspired two sets of variations by Busoni and one from Rachmaninov. Chopin returned to the form only once more in 1841 when he composed the Prelude in C sharp minor Op 45.

The word ‘Impromptu’ comes from the French, meaning ‘improvised’ or ‘on the spur of the moment’. Its musical application is heard most famously in the short song-like works given that title by Schubert. Here, for once, Chopin alighted on a title without transforming the genre, and Schubert’s are generally better known. The first occasion he used it was for his Fantaisie-Impromptu in 1834, one of his most popular pieces and yet curiously never approved for publication (it was issued posthumously by his friend Julian Fontana in 1855 as Op 66), perhaps because it is too closely resembles Moscheles’s earlier Impromptu in E flat major Op 89. It combines the elements of ‘étude’ and ‘nocturne’ to winning effect. The famous central melody is one of Chopin’s most memorable—and in 1919 provided two American songwriters with a hit entitled ‘I’m always chasing rainbows’.

Each of the three Impromptus that followed was, significantly, allotted its own opus number, like each Scherzo and Ballade. The Impromptu No 1 in A flat major Op 29 (1837) is among the most beautiful and spontaneous of all Chopin’s compositions, closely following the model of the earlier Op 66. In George du Maurier’s novel Trilby the piece becomes a talisman in the hands of Svengali, using it to hypnotize the eponymous heroine. No 2 in F sharp major Op 36 has an entirely novel structure, with its dream-like opening progressing to a march in D major and concluding with three pages of brilliant passage work. The Impromptu No 3 in G flat major Op 51 exists in two versions; it is the final form that is recorded here. It is a strange, haunting piece for which Chopin had a particular predilection—and strangeness should be, according to Edgar Allan Poe, a constituent of all great art.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth we are reissuing on Helios some of the finest performances from Garrick Ohlsson’s complete Chopin project, originally recorded for the American label Arabesque and reissued on Hyperion as a 16 CD boxed set CDS44351/66) in 2008. Sadly unacknowledged at the time of their original issue (very few of the original discs received much review coverage), these CDs include some of the greatest contemporary Chopin playing and include definitive performances of the complete etudes and mazurkas. It’s worth remembering the not only did Garrick win the 1970 Chopin competition (the only American to do so), but he also won the special prize for Mazurka playing, that most idiomatically Polish genre of Chopin’s output.

It has been said that the mazurkas are the soul of Chopin, revealing facets of his personality and emotions more directly than any other of his compositions. Of all the forms in which he wrote throughout his career, Chopin turned most frequently to the mazurka, so that the whole collection forms a kind of musical diary, one in which he could confide his most private thoughts, and which, coincidentally, charts his progress as a composer. His modulations, harmonies and use of counterpoint become (generally) more adventurous with each new set. Some later examples verge on the experimental.

Chopin preserved the various quintessential elements of this Polish folk dance—the sudden changes of emotion, for instance, or the drone bass of the bagpipes—and, as with the waltz, polonaise and nocturne, elevated an established form into the realm of high art. They are startlingly original—even eccentric sometimes—for the form inspired in him a freedom to explore without inhibition. For all their brevity (few last longer than four minutes) and the variations based on a simple ABA structure (sometimes with a coda), these miniatures have the same narrative cohesion and depth as the more extended Ballades.

Volume 2 of the complete mazurkas combines the four late sets of Opp 50, 56, 59 and 63, followed by fifteen individual dances composed between 1826 and 1849. Though Chopin left instructions for them to be destroyed, the two sets published as Opp 67 and 68 were issued after Chopin’s death in 1855 by his friend Julian Fontana with the approval of the composer’s family.

The Op 50 set and the three groups that follow share similar structures: an imposing opening dance succeeded by a simpler one and culminating in a contrapuntal finale. On average, they are longer than the earlier mazurkas with more development and use of counterpoint (Op 50 No 3 in C sharp minor and Op 56 No 3 in C minor, for instance, reflect Chopin’s fondness for Bach and the Well-Tempered Clavier). And are they bagpipes we hear in Op 56 No 2? The set was dedicated to his Scottish pupil Catherine Maberly, a friend of his benefactor Jane Stirling.

If the three mazurkas of Op 59 (1846) are less ambitious in scope, they seem more spontaneous and at ease, yet with some of Chopin’s most daring modulations (No 1 in A minor) and beautiful melodies (No 2 in A flat major). Also present, and not mentioned hitherto, is another element used frequently throughout the mazurkas—the (sometimes obsessive) use of repeated patterns, as in the well-known final mazurka of the set in F sharp minor.

Op 63 was the last set that Chopin published (1847). It is dedicated to the Countess Laura Czosnowska from Warsaw, the flirtatious friend of Chopin’s sister Ludwika. No 1 is certainly vivacious (note a repetitive figure again in the central section). No 3 in C sharp minor is justly celebrated, its poignant melody cleverly worked as a canon in the coda.

Of the Opp 67 and 68 mazurkas, the best are Op 67 No 4 in A minor (composed in 1846) and Op 68 No 4 in F minor, to which Fontana affixed the following: ‘Cette Mazurka est la dernière inspiration que Chopin ait jetée sur le papier peu de temps avant sa mort; il était déjà trop malade pour l’essayer au piano.’ (‘This Mazurka is the last inspiration that Chopin committed to paper shortly before his death; he was already too ill to try it out on the piano.’)

Wilhelm von Lenz recalled in 1872 the experience of hearing Chopin play his mazurkas: ‘There his playing was truly at home; in them resided Chopin’s originality as a pianist.’ Berlioz agreed. As early as December 1833 (in Le Rénovateur), he was aware of this unique style of playing. ‘Virtually nobody but Chopin himself can play his music and give it this unusual turn’ with ‘a thousand nuances … which are impossible to convey by instructions. There are unbelievable details in his Mazurkas; and he has found how to make them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of softness, piano in the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings, so much so that one is tempted to go close to the instrument and put one’s ear to it as if to a concert of sylphs or elves.’

Chopin played his mazurkas with a rubato so free that some took it to be erratic timing. Meyerbeer called on Chopin one day while he was playing the Mazurka Op 63 No 3, took a seat and commented that Chopin was playing in 2/4. No, Chopin insisted, he was playing in 3/4. No, countered Meyerbeer calmly, beating time, it’s in 2/4. Chopin, who normally never raised his voice, is then reported to have screamed in rage at the suggestion he was playing in anything other than strict time. The two composers held their own and, sadly, parted on bad terms. On another occasion some years later, Karl Halle (better known subsequently as Sir Charles Hallé) made the same observation as Meyerbeer, suggesting that a particular mazurka appeared to be written in 4/4. He obviously caught Chopin in a better mood, for while Chopin initially denied that he was playing in 4/4, in the end had to admit that Halle was right, laughing that it was ‘the national character of the dance which created the oddity’.