Chopin: Prelude Op. 28 No. 4 in E minor

Master pianist Maurizio Pollini turned 70 on January 5th, 2012 and DG are celebrating this milestone birthday with a new album of breath-taking Chopin. Pollini’s Chopin recordings are his best-sellers – the complete Nocturnes, released in 2005, have sold more than 100,000 CDs to date.

Chopin: Preludes is a birthday programme of newly recorded solo works: Preludes op.28, four Mazurkas op.30, two Nocturnes op.27, and the Scherzo no.2 op.31. Pollini often feature Chopin’s works in his solo recitals – The Guardian raved, “... he still plays Chopin with the ease that floored even Rubinstein more than 50 years ago ...”

Daniel Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires in 1942 and received his first piano lessons at age five from his mother. Later, he studied under his father, who would remain his only piano teacher. He gave his first public concert when he was seven and in 1952, he moved with his parents to Israel. At the age of ten, Barenboim gave his international debut performance as a solo pianist in Vienna and Rome, followed by Paris (1955), London (1956) and New York (1957). He began his recording career in 1954 as a pianist. He signed exclusively to EMI in 1966 and in the space of a few years he recorded the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, the Beethoven Piano Concertos (with Otto Klemperer), the Brahms Piano Concertos (with Sir John Barbirolli), and all the Mozart piano concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra, directing from the keyboard. Ever since his conducting debut in 1967 in London with the New Philharmonia Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim has been in great demand with leading orchestras around the world. He made his debut as an opera conductor at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973 with Mozart’s Don Giovanni and in 1981 he conducted for the first time in Bayreuth, where he would conduct every summer until 1999. His career continues to flourish with even-increasing success and he is now one of the most respected and admired musicians in the world.

The first CD is devoted to Barenboim performing music by Mozart, beginning with the Piano Concerto No.23 in A (K488) with the English Chamber Orchestra directed from the keyboard by the young Barenboim soon after he began recording for EMI. Then we hear Barenboim in chamber music, in Mozart’s Piano Trio in G K564, recorded almost 40 years later, with the outstanding Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider and the young Belarusian cellist Kyril Zlotnikov, whom Barenboim admires so much that he has loaned him the Peresson cello that had belonged to Barenboim’s wife, the late Jacqueline du Pré. Next comes Mozart’s set of Variations on ‘Les hommes pieusement’ by Gluck, and then Barenboim moves to the role of operatic conductor with the Mask Trio from Don Giovanni, recorded with the cast he conducted at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. The CD concludes with the finale from Mozart’s famous ‘Jupiter’ Symphony in which Barenboim conducts the Orchestre de Paris, of which he was principal conductor from 1975 to 1989.

CD 2 presents Barenboim in a wide range of contrasting repertoire, illustrating his extreme versatility as both pianist and conductor. The programme begins with Beethoven’s ‘Choral Fantasy’ which Barenboim conducts from the keyboard – no mean feat since the work involves a full symphony orchestra, a chorus and six vocal soloists, as well as the piano! The two movements from Bizet’s charming Jeux d’enfants are a further reminder of Barenboim’s time with the Orchestre de Paris, and then the opening movement from Bartók’s powerful First Piano Concerto gives Barenboim the opportunity to demonstrate his keyboard virtuosity in music of the 20th century. Chopin’s Prelude No.4 in E minor is a brief glimpse of Barenboim’s understanding of the music of this Polish genius before we move to the romantic third movement of Brahms’s monumental Second Piano Concerto with Barenboim as an inspired soloist. The last two pieces put Barenboim back in the role of conductor, firstly in Fauré’s hauntingly beautiful Pavane recorded in Paris and then in Bruckner’s magnificent Te Deum with the forces of the New Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra and four distinguished vocal soloists.

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.

Hélène Tysman has the ability to take the listener’s hand, at the outset of a Prélude or of a Sonata movement, and to lead and hold your attention until the very last bar, due to the outstanding range of colours she conjures up. She studied at the Paris Conservatory and has performed with many orchestras including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Sheila Arnold’s performances show Chopin’s works in a new light; through the thrilling grasps of the perfomer, born in India and now a German pianist, who grapples intensively with historical instruments on all levels, producing a different sound and a complete new dimension on the pieces. She performs on an Érard Fortepiano (Paris 1839).

A journey into Chopin's world . . . On 21 February 1842, the Polish composer gave one of his very rare concerts: he did not enjoy appearing in public, for his music was above all a chamber art. Alain Planès has striven to recreate the programme of this concert as closely as possible and recorded it on a Pleyel piano of 1836 that the composer might have played.The questions he throws up in the process are fascinating: how did Chopin play? Apart from his famous rubato, what was the role of ornamentation, and indeed improvisation?