Chopin Piano Concertos

Award-winning pianist Ingrid Fliter makes her Linn debut with a distinctive performance of Chopin’s notoriously difficult piano concertos, featuring the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jun Märkl. Since winning the silver medal at the 2000 Frederic Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Ingrid has built a reputation as a first-rate Chopin interpreter.

Written by a young and ambitious Chopin as self-promotional vehicle to demonstrate his performance capabilities and, to a lesser degree, his compositional skills, the two piano concertos have remained as an important part of the instrument's repertoire. Often derided for their somewhat trite orchestral parts, these concertos are nevertheless beautiful, thoroughly enjoyable works. While there are countless recordings of the piano works of Beethoven and Mozart on period instruments, this inclination has found its way to Chopin's works with less frequency. This album, produced by The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, makes use of an 1849 Erard fortepiano made in Paris, very similar to the instruments Chopin himself would have used.

There are a number of fine couplings of the Chopin concertos in the catalog, however, so highly regarded were these Rubinstein recordings that for decades they were the standard by which all others were measured.

The pianist on this CD, Yulliana Avdeeva, is the winner of the Chopin piano competition in 2010. Checking the internet, you will find that the decision by the jury was controversial. Her playing was considered not to display the proper Chopin style, and too cool. I wasn't present at the competition, so I cannot write much about this. But having bought this CD, mainly because of use of old instruments, and the direction by the recently deceased icon of old music Frans Brüggen, I must say that I was totally blown away by the playing of Yulianna Avdeeva.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, is a piano concerto written by Frédéric Chopin in 1830, when he was twenty years old. It was first performed on 12 October of that year, at the Teatr Narodowy (the National Theatre) in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as soloist, during one of his "farewell" concerts before leaving Poland. It was the first of Chopin's two piano concertos to be published, and was therefore given the designation of Piano Concerto "No. 1" at the time of publication, even though it was actually written immediately after the premiere of what was later published as Piano Concerto No. 2.

For the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frédéric Chopin, the renowned Ruhr Piano Festival in Essen invited the Staatskapelle Berlin to give a truly special program: the rare combination of Chopin‘s two piano concertos in one concert. For this purpose Daniel Barenboim, the orchestra‘s principal conductor, handed over the reins of „his“ ensemble to up-and-coming young conductor Andris Nelsons, assuming the role of piano soloist instead. The press raved: „Storms of applause for a dream couple: Daniel Barenboim and Andris Nelsons won over the audience […] with their rousing Chopin interpretations“.

Yundi, one of the most celebrated and influential pianists of today, has returned to Warner Classics with the signature of a long-term agreement between him and the label. His first release under the new agreement, due for release in January 2020, will be an album of Chopin’s Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2, on which he directs the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard. This constitutes both his first recording as pianist-conductor and his first recording of the Piano Concerto No 2. His previous Warner Classics release, the complete Chopin Nocturnes, dates from 2010.