Chopin 2010 – Celebrating the 200th Anniversary Around the World!
Extensive information can be found on the official website available in Polish, English, French to this day and soon in Japanese and Chinese.
Special Birthday Concerts is the first of the three key highlights of the Chopin Year. Held by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, the concerts series spans between the two alleged dates of Chopin’s birth: 22nd February and 1st March. Celebrating the composer’s bicentenary, Warsaw gathers the absolute crème de la crème of the world’s pianists, including: Daniel Barenboim, Piotr Anderszewski, Leif Ove Andsnes, Rafał Blechacz (who is opening the event), Dang Thai Son, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Janusz Olejniczak, Murray Perahia, Ivo Pogorelić and Yundi Li.
The pianists are accompanied by Frans Brüggen’s Orchestra of the 18th Century and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under Antoni Wit.
“A superbly articulated performance … enriched by a magnificent orchestral accompaniment.”
At this year’s MIDEM, the international gathering of the music industry in Cannes, Ronald Brautigam accepted an award for his recording of Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto (BIS-SACD-1792).
The MIDEM Classical Awards are bestowed by a jury consisting of representatives for the international music press and media, who selected Ronald Brautigam’s recording as the best concerto disc of 2009. Part of a cycle of Beethoven’s complete works for piano and orchestra, the disc also features a rarely heard early work by the composer, the Piano Concerto WoO4, for which Brautigam himself has made the reconstruction of the orchestral score.
Brautigam’s partners in this project, which will be concluded in 2010 by the release of Piano Concerto No.5 and the Choral Fantasy, are the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and conductor Andrew Parrott.
Each of the two volumes of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier contains one prelude and one fugue in every major and minor key. Often called “the 48”, or the “Old Testament” of piano music (the new being Beethoven’s sonatas) it is perhaps the most important keyboard work of all time.
The preludes are very varied in style and often deal with a specific technical feature, while the fugues are remarkable for their wide range of contrapuntal techniques and modes of expression.
Interpreting these masterpieces is a great challenge and inspiration for every pianist and the sets of complete recordings available are numerous, displaying a wide range of interpretational approaches. Even more numerous are the unrecorded performances throughout history; it is indeed slightly annoying that, no matter how fast and far modern technology evolves, we will probably never be able to listen to performances by our 18th and 19th century masters. But we have at least some very detailed 19th century editions left, for example one by Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny (of which WTC book 1 is available from Piano Street’s online sheet music library) which is considered to give hints on how Beethoven played these pieces.
Returning to February 2010, pianist Martin Sturfält is starting an ambitious project in which he plans to record all 48 Preludes and Fugues for Piano Street. “In recording DWK I seek to fuse the prevailing neo-classical approach to playing Bach on the modern piano with the vitality of the period instrument movement. This enables me to make stylistically informed choices while keeping an undogmatic view on these masterpieces of the keyboard repertoire”, says Sturfält.
His new recording of seven of the Preludes & Fugues from Book 1 as well as two from Book 2 is now available from Piano Street for listening and downloading.
Listen and follow the project on this page: “Recording the 48″ – Preludes and Fugues by Bach
As a free sample we are happy to share with you the recording and Urtext score of the Prelude and Fugue no 7 in E-flat major from Book 2:
(click play button twice to start)
Please join us in welcoming pianist Martin Sturfält as the newest member of the Piano Street Team and enjoy these 18 new tracks!
Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor (1854) is arguably his finest composition and one of the greatest piano sonatas ever written. Many places it alongside Schumann’s Fantasy Op. 17 as “the two 19th-century masterpieces” of the piano literature.
Although Liszt performed it for his enthusiastic disciples in Weimar the work failed to impress Brahms or Clara Schumann. Robert Schumann, to whom it was dedicated, was already incarcerated in the asylum in Endenich by the time of the Sonata´s arrival in his home in Düsseldorf.
The Sonata drew an enthusiastic compliment from Richard Wagner following a private performance of the piece by Karl Klindworth in 1855. Published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1854 it was first performed on January 27, 1857 in Berlin by Liszt’s pupil and son-in-law, Hans von BĂĽlow. It has now been more than 150 years after the Sonata’s public premiere and no musicologist, music theorist or classical music fan can deny its influence, craft and original power. The work also represents one of the most successful solutions of the problems of the sonata form to come out of the 19th century.
Already in 1822 Schubert in his Wanderer Fantasy had successfully achieved the same feat. The Wanderer Fantasy was one of Liszt´s favourite concert pieces which he also arranged for piano and orchestra in 1851. An interesting argument on behalf of Liszt´s borrowings from Beethoven and of a program built upon those borrowings emphasizes a conflict between good and evil (Giovanni Minotti, 1934).
Another detailed study by Tibor Szász (1985) suggests, in terms of studying melodies found elsewhere in Liszt´s music, a possible presence of a program in the Sonata based on biblical texts.
The Sonata is notable for being constructed from five motivic elements that are woven into an enormous musical architecture. The motivic units undergo thematic transformation throughout the work to suit the musical context of the moment. A theme that in one context sounds menacing and even violent, is then transformed into a beautiful melody. This technique helps to bind the sonata’s sprawling structure into a single cohesive unit.
Broadly speaking, the Sonata has four movements although there is no gap between them. Superimposed upon the four movements is a large sonata form structure, although the precise beginnings and endings of the traditional development and recapitulation sections has long been a topic of debate. Charles Rosen states in his book The Classical Style that the entire piece fits the mold of a sonata form because of the reprise of material from the first movement that had been in D major, the relative major, now reprised in B minor. Alan Walker, the forefront contemporary Liszt scholar, believes that the development begins roughly with the slow section at measure 331, the leadback towards the recapitulation begins at the scherzo fugue, measure 459, and the recapitulation and coda are at measures 533 and 682 respectively. Each of these sections (exposition, development, leadback, and recapitulation) are examples of Classical forms in and of themselves, which means that this piece is one of the earliest examples of Double-function form, a piece of music which has two classical forms occurring simultaneously, one containing others. For instance the exposition is a sonata form which starts and ends with material in B minor, containing the second part of the exposition and development wandering away from the tonic key, largely through the relative major D.
Támás Vásary (five parts):
Outstanding Hungarian pianist and conductor Támás Vásáry (b. 1933), Liszt competition winner 1948 and noted för his Chopin recordings on Deutsche Grammophone, gives us a brilliant recent interpretation of the sonata. The balancing of detail in relation to the whole, a beautiful piano sound and contrasts between lyricism and eruptive drama, makes this recording one of my favourites.
Claudio Arrau (four parts):
Legendary pianist Claudio Arrau (1903-91), who studied with the Liszt pupil Martin Krause in Berlin, offers an unforgettable and monumental rendition through a full orchestral reading of the piece, revealing an epic and almost religious interpretation which makes us think of the sonata form as a grand theatrical drama.
Special Birthday Concerts is the first of the three key highlights of the Chopin Year. Held by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, the concerts series spans between the two alleged dates of Chopin’s birth: 22nd February and 1st March. Celebrating the composer’s bicentenary, Warsaw gathers the absolute crème de la crème of the world’s pianists, including: Daniel Barenboim, Piotr Anderszewski, Leif Ove Andsnes, Rafał Blechacz (who is opening the event), Dang Thai Son, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Janusz Olejniczak, Murray Perahia, Ivo Pogorelić and Yundi Li.
Interpreting these masterpieces is a great challenge and inspiration for every pianist and the sets of complete recordings available are numerous, displaying a wide range of interpretational approaches. Even more numerous are the unrecorded performances throughout history; it is indeed slightly annoying that, no matter how fast and far modern technology evolves, we will probably never be able to listen to performances by our 18th and 19th century masters. But we have at least some very detailed 19th century editions left, for example one by Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny (of which 
Returning to February 2010, pianist Martin Sturfält is starting an ambitious project in which he plans to record all 48 Preludes and Fugues for Piano Street.
Charles Rosen states in his book 
