Chopin: 傅聪 Fou Ts'ong

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.

Chopin's two piano concertos are almost always paired with each other on recordings, but this Naxos release, with Uzbek-born pianist Eldar Nebolsin and the Warsaw Philharmonic under Antoni Wit, offers a more inventive and even more illuminating program of early Chopin pieces. The Fantasia on Polish Airs, Op. 13, actually predated the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, and it's quite rarely performed.

The Nocturne is a romantic piano piece in which a nocturnal, romantic atmosphere is expressed, where perfumed melodies float serenely over a calmly murmuring accompaniment.-Credit where credit is due: the inventor of the genre is the Irish composer John Field, who made fame as a pianist of his own works. It needed the genius of Chopin to perfect the genre to the highest artistic level: Chopin's Nocturnes are the archetypes of romantic piano music, and count among his best loved works.

Pianist Yundi, formerly Yundi Li, might have several reasons for trying something new with Chopin. It was with Chopin that he became the youngest and the first Chinese winner of the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, at age 18 in 2000, and he has played Chopin countless times since then. Cynics might recall that a Yundi Chopin concerto performance crashed and burned several years ago owing to miscommunications between pianist and conductor. Whatever the case, Yundi here conducts the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard.

This 6CD set charts not only the development of the Nocturne as a musical form, but also the development of the piano from the closing years of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. Two great ‘piano schools’ had emerged, each having some of the greatest performers and composers of the day associated with them. Some of these composers were highly successful businessmen as well – Clementi and Pleyel in particular established highly successful piano manufacturing and music publishing firms. The English school, with its powerful instruments (of which the pianos of John Broadwood and Co are the best examples) enabled London based composers such as Cramer, Clementi and Dussek to write music with a singing almost bel canto quality.

France's Naïve label has heavily promoted the career of the young pianist Lise de la Salle, who was 22 when this recording was made. Her fashion-spread good looks fit with Naïve's design concepts, and she has the ability to deliver the spontaneous, unorthodox performances the label favors. How does she fare in a field extremely crowded with Chopin recitals? Her performances certainly aren't derivative of anyone else, and this live recording from the Semperoper in Dresden (you get a one-minute track of just applause at the end) has a good deal of attention-getting flair. The standout feature of de la Salle's performance, in the four ballades at least, is her orientation toward slow tempos, inventively deployed.

Known for his dazzling performances of music by Franz Liszt and Sergey Rachmaninov, Russian virtuoso Nikolai Lugansky presents his first recording of the two piano concertos of Frédéric Chopin, which are much quieter than his usual fare. Indeed, the music seems quite intimate and almost chamber-like on this 2013 Naïve Ambroisie release, due to Lugansky's controlled and fairly introspective playing.

Daniil Trifonov is a Russian pianist who won one of the prizes at the 2010 International Chopin Competition when he was only 19. This CD was recorded back then. He has had a burgeoning career since then and he has recorded two previously released Chopin CDs: Daniil Trifonov Plays Frederic Chopin &Mazurkas Op 56 / Nocturne in B Major to general praise.

The 2015 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw was so thick with talent that even as fine a Chopin interpreter as Aimi Kobayashi did not make the medal stand (she did place in the round of ten). She's an exceptional pianist who brings the power and speed of the piano stars of yore, who often plays Liszt as well as Chopin. On this release of Chopin's preludes, plus a few other Chopin hits, listen to the well-worn Prelude in C minor, Op. 28, No. 20, where the imposing opening chords seem to pulse through the whole work. Kobayashi's passagework in the faster preludes is fleet but never muddy, and where Chopin has embedded a melody, she catches it.

The quartet of Chopin pupils presented on this disc may or may not be known to you. Certainly Mikuli should be, as he’s the best known, but Tellefsen may also have crossed your musical horizons at some point; the short-lived Filtsch probably only via a semi-celebrated comment from Liszt and Gutmann, I suspect, not at all. Together we have twenty-two pieces of music, all brief, in dance or salon form, all predominantly light; a profusion, in other words, of Polonaises, Barcarolles, Impromptus, Waltzes, Mazurkas and the odd Nocturne and Bolero: a very Chopinesque kind of selection, albeit without sonatas.