Chopin

Long description:

These recordings can be played by anyone within the European Union.

Acclaimed as the greatest composer for piano, Frederic Chopin's works have been recorded by all the great pianists of the recording era; from a private cylinder of Paul Pabst playing the Nocturne in E major Op. 62 No. 2 in 1895 to artists of the present day. Here you may listen to many recordings made before 1958 that were released on 78s or LPs. Because the piano was such a difficult instrument to record in the early days of the gramophone, Chopin's most famous Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2, was transcribed for various other instruments and therefore some of the earliest recordings in this selection are versions for violin and cello recorded more than one hundred years ago in 1905.

All of Chopin's major works are represented and can be compared in many different performances. Artists who studied with pupils of Chopin can be heard:
Moriz Rosenthal claimed that he learnt how to play a perfect Chopin legato from his teacher Karl Mikuli. Other great nineteenth century performers include Vladimir de Pachmann, the most famous Chopin exponent at the end of the century who was born in 1848 a year before Chopin died, while the Polish Ignace Jan Paderewski (who later became prime minister of Poland) was the most famous pianist of his era.

The greatest Chopin interpreters of the twentieth century, Alfred Cortot and Arthur Rubinstein are generously represented with the latter's complete Mazurkas and Nocturnes and Cortot's complete Waltzes and Preludes from the 1930s. These performances can be compared with a very different approach from an artist such as Stefan Askenase in the 1950s. Many names that have been forgotten are well worth rediscovering, such as Robert Lortat who performed the complete works of Chopin in the 1920s and recorded the complete Etudes, Waltzes, Preludes and Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor Op. 35. The first complete recording of the Etudes made in 1928 by Wilhelm Backhaus can be compared to one made almost thirty years later by a very different pianist, Claudio Arrau, as well as a rarely heard set played by Austrian-American pianist Robert Goldsand.

Recordings of other great performers often identified with Chopin during their careers include Benno Moiseiwitsch, Raoul Koczalski and Witold Malcuzynski while Ignaz Friedman can be heard in his famous selection of Mazurkas, and Leopold Godowsky with his selection of Nocturnes. Two great pianist-composers, Sergei Rachmaninov and Leopold Godowsky interpret the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor Op. 35 and the great Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni plays two Etudes and a Nocturne displaying the very facets of coolness of which contemporary reports complain. As one critic commented on his playing of cantelina passages during a performance in 1920, 'Signor Busoni is determined to be revenged on the sentimentalists and so he seizes Chopin by the throat and threatens to throttle the life out of him...Stripped bare of sentiment, it seems as though the pianist were determined to show that after all there is very little in such episodes, and to force us to concentrate attention on the purely intellectual developments of the design.' When we listen to Busoni's recordings and compare them with Chopin playing today, are the criticisms now valid?

Unusual recordings include radio personality Alberto Semprini playing an Etude while the composer of syncopated novelty solos Billy Mayerl plays three preludes 'on the world's largest grand piano.' Oscar Levant and Jose Iturbi prove that they were fine classically trained musicians before working in Hollywood and a host of once popular and otherwise forgotten names can be re-assessed - Lilian Bryant, Lily Dymont, Stanislas Niedzielski and Nicolas Orloff.

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