Chopin: Mazurka No. 10 in B flat major, Op. 17 No. 1

The life and career of Frédéric Chopin (“a man of noble ideas”, according to Debussy) have been much written about, and have given rise to numerous legends and exaggerated stories. The hackneyed clichés of the fragile and ailing artist, of the worldly seducer, and the unfortunate circumstances of his break-up with George Sand are all too well known to need re-telling here. Heinrich Heine said of Chopin that he was “the kindest, the most reserved and the most modest of men of genius”. The composer himself was notably reticent, but summed up his own complex personality with the words: “On the outside I am cheerful, but inside I am in turmoil.”

In addition to its staggering virtuosity, Chopin’s music is pervaded by an indefinable sadness that combines suffering, sensuousness and melancholy – characteristics that may owe something to his exile from his native Poland, which he left in 1830, never to return. The Nocturnes and some of the Preludes – several of which acquired sub-titles that the composer detested – give off a mysterious aura of poetry and comtemplation. “What emotions he was able to embody in music! And what passionate and melancholy reveries he liked to indulge in!” Berlioz recalled. Whatever sentiment is expressed in the music of Chopin, sensuousness remains one of the dominant elements of his aesthetic palette and of a musical style that was completely new and inimitable.

Christina Bjørkøe (b.1970) began learning the piano at the age of five from her mother. In 1978 she became a pupil of Therese Koppel, who taught her until 1990, then she studied with Seymour Lipkin at the Juilliard School in New York and with Anne Øland at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where she made her debut as a soloist in 1997. She has been awarded several prestigious prizes and grants, among them Victor Borges Musikpris in 1994, Victor Schiølers Legat in 1999, and Merete og Helge Finsens Hæderpris for 1999.

Christina Bjørkøe is associate professor at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music Odense. She has made various acclaimed recordings of piano music from her homeland for CPO and Dacapo, including the works of Knudåge Riisager, Carl Nielsen, Herman D Koppel and Niels Viggo Bentzon.

Now she turns to music as well-loved and familiar as it is elusive, the Preludes of Chopin. They were conceived and composed amid the rain and emotional turmoil (far different from its modern reputation as a sun-seeker’s paradise) of Majorca, whence he had decamped with his mistress George Sand and her two children in search of a climate that would ameliorate his health, debilitated as he was by the onset of tuberculosis.

It was not to be. However, the Preludes form a deeply disciplined exercise in poetic sensibility, covering all the major and minor keys like Bach before him in The Well-Tempered Clavier. Each prelude is a poem, a complete, self-contained musical statement.

Ewa Pobłocka is a versatile pianist boasting a vast repertoire, giving recitals, orchestral and chamber music concerts and accompanying singers. She has given numerous first performances and world premiere recordings by Polish contemporary composers including Panufnik’s Piano Concerto. She has made many recordings, including Chopin’s songs. Here she performs on a Pleyel 1848 fortepiano.

This new recording of 21 of Chopin's Mazurkas sees the young Russian pianist Vassily Primakov commencing his exploration of Chopin's solo works for Bridge Records.