Chopin: Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60 - CD

Clarity of form and colour, the piano as a narrator and ballad-singer: Nelson Goerner has his own way of interpreting Chopin, and he shows it here in a varied recital programme ranging from major works like the famous B minor Sonata through the Nocturnes to the F minor Ballade.

This is Volume 2 in our series of solo piano works by Chopin, played by the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie.

Recording exclusively for Chandos, Lortie is recognised as one of the finest interpreters of Chopin today. He first recorded Chopin’s Études for Chandos more than twenty years ago; the disc was named as one of the ‘50 great performances by superlative pianists’ by BBC Music. Volume 1 of his current Chopin series also has received excellent reviews: the magazine Pianist wrote: ‘He is a pianist of our time when it comes to speed, energy and an unfussy approach to Chopin. His way of playing is like a sharply cut steel sculpture, super elegant and with not one single smudge.’ And in the words of International Piano: ‘These are full-blooded and eloquent performances, an auspicious start to what looks likely to become one of the finest of Chopin surveys.’

The ballade was associated with French poetry up until the mid-nineteenth century, when Chopin was among the first to transform the genre into a purely musical form for solo piano. His four ballades, recorded here, are among his most extraordinary and powerful works, full of dramatic contrasts, with moments of lyrical tenderness followed by passages of rambunctious energy.

The Irish composer John Field invented the piano nocturne as a lyrical and dreamy short piece, a charming and languorous creation that was later transformed and extended by Chopin into something with a much wider emotional range, and a general sense of wistfulness. This ‘Chopin’ style of nocturne soon came to replace the Fieldian style as the preferred model of the genre. The simplicity and directness of expression found in the nocturnes have made them the most popular of all Chopin’s works.

Composed towards the end of his life, the Barcarolle (originally a Venetian gondolier’s song) for solo piano is a melancholy, but sweepingly romantic work that conjures up strong images of Venetian boats, water, and oars. Also on this disc is the Berceuse (inspired by the traditional mood of the lullaby), based around a single four-bar theme which Chopin ornaments in increasingly elaborate ways as the piece develops.

Sviatoslav Richter (1915–1997) is acknowledged today as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century along with his great Russian contemporaries, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels and Mstislav Rostropovich.

This rare broadcast recording makes its first appearance on CD.

The June 1967 recital at the Royal Festival Hall very much reflects the pianist’s personal taste, containing the rarely played Haydn and Weber Sonatas together with the Schumann Novelettes with the more popular additions of Chopin and Debussy.

He declared, ‘my principle is to play only works that I really love and not just those that are currently accepted’.

Of all the Haydn Sonatas that Richter played, No.62 featured more frequently in his programmes as did the Weber Sonata No.3, which he regarded in a notebook entry in 1990 as a ‘highly original work and I like it a lot’.

The two Schumann Novelettes were often played in the 1960s though Richter did not perform No.8 for the following two decades. With the Chopin and Debussy, Richter is on familiar territory, which he invests with his characteristic imagination and spontaneity.

Superb Ambient Mastering recreates the atmosphere in the Royal Festival Hall perfectly.

This 2-channel hybrid SACD features the much admired Ukrainean pianist Sergei Edelmann in a collection of pieces for solo piano by Frederick Chopin. The disc includes the Four Ballades, as well as the Barcarolle in F sharp minor, opus 60, the Fantasie in F minor, opus 49, and the Polonaise No. 7 in A flat major known as the “Polonaise Fantasie”.

Born in Lvov, Ukraine in 1960, Sergei Edelmann comes from a long and outstanding musical heritage. He was taught to play by his father Alexander Edelmann, a renowned pianist and teacher who had links to Vladimir Horowitz and Sviatoslav Richter. In his native country Sergei’s first orchestral performance was at the age of 10 playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1. He subsequently performed extensively in recitals and with orchestras throughout the old USSR. His BMG Classics/RCA Red Seal CDs with the Bamberg Symphony under the baton of Claus Peter Flor and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with Paavo Berglund include both Mendelssohn Concertos and the Strauss Burlesque, and his series of solo recordings of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and Prokofiev have garnered enthusiastic critical acclaim.

Frederick Chopin’s Four Ballades represent some of the most challenging music in the solo piano repertoire. They were composed between 1835 and 1842, and were the first to use the word “Ballade” (a term which was previously associated with 19th century French poetry) in a musical context. Despite a shared lyrical quality, each piece is however highly distinctive in style and mood.

Stephen Hough joins the celebrations for Chopin’s 200th birthday with a disc containing much of the composer’s most extraordinary music, written in the last years of his life where the expressive possibilites of his art were constantly unfolding as he imbued his favoured forms with previously unknown levels of complexity and emotional depth. This disc includes the intoxicatingly ornamented Berceuse Op 57 and the sublime Barcarolle in F sharp major as well as the Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major and the towering Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor. Also included are two late Nocturnes which demonstrate how Chopin’s art had evolved since he first composed in that genre in his youth. The programme is completed by a selection of Mazurkas, each a tiny jewel, containing no less mastery than their larger counterparts, and providing moving sonic evidence of the contemplative profundity of Chopin’s late style.

Stephen Hough’s extraordinarily sensitive playing is informed by his limitless technique and engaging musical imagination. This is the Chopin of a true Romantic.