Chopin Genius Loci

This Da Vinci Classics album comprises some of the most famous and beloved masterpieces not only among Chopin’s works, but also in the entire piano literature. True, piano literature without Chopin is hardly imaginable; but Chopin without his Ballades, his Scherzos and his Sonatas would not be Chopin. The programme is composed by four shorter works, each conceived individually while also being one in a set of four similar pieces, and by one larger creation, in the most important form created in Western music, i.e. that of the Sonata.

The piano poet Chopin left behind a collection of masterpieces throughout his life, from gorgeous pieces to sad masterpieces. Katsaris, a genius pianist who once served as a lecturer on the NHK program ``Playing Chopin,'' beautifully brings out Chopin's lyricism and lets us listen to music that touches the heart. This is a masterpiece with a clear, unclouded tone and elegant interpretation based on solid technique.

Chopin is touted to be the ‘poet’ of the piano. One must wonder what that means. A poem is an art form of taking written words and arranging them so that language is elevated up to an artistic realm. I feel Chopin, then, was indeed a poet of the piano. He took the extant musical language of his time, expanded the musical vocabulary, and arranged them to make the expanded scope of expression possible. Chopin’s music requires a specialised kind of pianism: supple yet strong fingers, an almost infinite range of tone colours, a sense of timing that is well-proportioned but not exaggerated, etc. Nina Svetlanova was my teacher during my doctoral studies at the Manhattan School of Music. She entered Heinrich Neuhaus’s studio in Moscow when she was sixteen. In that studio, she learned of secret know-hows of piano playing. Playing legato (or mimicking as best as you could) was part of countless brilliant ways of playing the piano.