Katey Chopin

Leopold Godowsky's "transcriptions" of Chopin's etudes are notorious for being technically difficult beyond the originals and, therefore, are rarely played, much less recorded, unless the pianist is a super-virtuoso like Marc-André Hamelin. Boris Berezovsky is another who has proven himself up to the task of successfully performing the fiendish studies.

Maria João Pires, widely recognized as one of the most brilliant pianists of the last forty years, celebrates her 20th anniversary as a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive recording artist with this 2-CD release devoted entirely to the works of Chopin, the artist's first new recording in over four years. Pires's affinity for Chopin has always been well-known to both critics and audiences; in fact, her interpretations are so beloved that her 1996 recording of Chopin's Nocturnes remains the best-selling solo piano recording of the past 20 years by a living Deutsche Grammophon artist.

Cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Denes Várjon are known as instrumentalists for connoisseurs, delving deep into the structures of work and programming them in intelligent ways. You wouldn't pick Isserlis as a Chopin specialist, and Chopin wrote very little chamber music anyway. But he and Várjon deliver a gripping performance of the Chopin Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65, a notoriously troublesome work whose text is far from fixed. They play the first movement Maestoso, as it is marked in some sources, and they present a vision of the sonata as a work of great seriousness, complexity, and ambition.

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.

Pianist Alexei Lubimov performs all the works on this new recording on the Pianino / Upright piano Pleyel, 1843, Chopin's Piano. "I wanted to imagine how Classical repertoire could have sounded when interpreted by Chopin and his pupils on a Pleyel pianino in the composer's study-salon in Parisat home, with no audience. The Pleyel pianino dictated the manner of performing works by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, using its magic to transform their works into musical images of Chopin's world. I wanted to imagine, to grasp that hypnotic 'Chopinisation' of the great pre-Chopin composers.

Maria João Pires, widely recognized as one of the most brilliant pianists of the last forty years, celebrates her 20th anniversary as a Deutsche Grammophon exclusive recording artist with this 2-CD release devoted entirely to the works of Chopin, the artist's first new recording in over four years. Pires's affinity for Chopin has always been well-known to both critics and audiences; in fact, her interpretations are so beloved that her 1996 recording of Chopin's Nocturnes remains the best-selling solo piano recording of the past 20 years by a living Deutsche Grammophon artist.

The Polish pianist Halina Czerny-Stefanska (1922 - 1982) enjoyed a more substantial reputation among piano buffs than among music-lovers in general until she was unexpectedly shot to prominence by a mistake that got her talked about all around the world. In the early 1950s she had performed the First Concerto of Chopin under Vaclav Smetacek in a recording issued by the Czech label Supraphon; when EMI reissued the performance in 1965 it was attributed to Dinu Lipatti, the Romanian pianist whose premature death in 1950 robbed classical music of one of its brightest stars.

This CD has been released in memory of Tatiana Shebanova, who died not long after these recordings were made. It shows the exceptional relationship which she had with the historic Erard piano heard here. She fell in love with the instrument the very first time she played it.

This CD has been released in memory of Tatiana Shebanova, who died not long after these recordings were made. It shows the exceptional relationship which she had with the historic Erard piano heard here. She fell in love with the instrument the very first time she played it.

This CD has been released in memory of Tatiana Shebanova, who died not long after these recordings were made. It shows the exceptional relationship which she had with the historic Erard piano heard here. She fell in love with the instrument the very first time she played it.