Ballades

Didier Squiban - Ballades (2003) {L'Oz Production L'OZ 42}
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© 2003 L'Oz Production | L'OZ 42
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Solo Piano

Let's embark once again for the most mysterious of trips, the most beautiful of the walks. Let us carry over the notes following the unpredictable movement of an ocean more than capricious. The pace is accelerating, the melody is growing like a swell day of strong wind in the Iroise Sea … then comes the calm after the storm, leaving again appear the sweetness and finesse of the 9 compositions and arrangements of this musical masterpiece.

Vladimir Horowitz (who had a Polish grandmother and was fond of pointing out that he was "half as much a Pole as Chopin"), recorded more of Chopin's music than that of any other composer. Horowitz made four (approved) recordings of the Chopin's Ballade in G-Minor. Truth be told, he was never entirely successful in the work, finding difficulty in balancing the episodic and structural elements. The versions here, from the 1965 return concert and 1968 television recital, are the most successful technically and musically.

This Chopin recital represents Murray Perahia's return to the Sony studios after a two-year absence due to serious injury. So may I start by saying that this is surely the greatest, certainly the richest, of all his many and exemplary recordings. Once again his performances are graced with rare and classic attributes and now, to supreme clarity, tonal elegance and musical perspective, he adds an even stronger poetic profile, a surer sense of the inflammatory rhetoric underpinning Chopin's surface equilibrium. In other words the vividness and immediacy are as remarkable as the finesse. And here, arguably, is the oblique but telling influence of Horowitz who Perahia befriended during the last months of the old wizard's life.

Under the leadership of Paul Van Nevel, Belgium's Huelgas Ensemble continue their journey into medieval music on Perusio, a distinguished and imaginative collection of performances including "Helas Avril," "Ave Sancta Mundi Salus," "Gloria spiritus et alme" and "Laurea Martiri – Conlaudanda est."