Chopin
Birthdays on the Tube: 14-20 MarchMonday, 15 March 2010
This week's birthdays include the impeccably funky Sly Stone and Wilson Pickett, manic Chopin played by the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, lush orientalism from Rimsky-Korsakov, classic jazz from Bix Beiderbecke, and annoying pop from Clare... Read more... |
Martino Tirimo, Kings PlaceSunday, 14 March 2010
This is what Chopin anniversary year ought to be all about; not some celebrity showcase of plums and cornerstones in too large a hall before a restless audience, but a thoughtfully planned adventure zigzagging through the complete works on which the... Read more... |
Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, Barbican HallTuesday, 02 March 2010
In every partnership there is a leader, and it’s not always the featured name. While the hall was packed with Ma followers for this rare cello-and-piano recital, what emerged was a richly sensitising foretaste of what the Emanuel Ax residency is... Read more... |
Maurizio Pollini, Royal Festival HallMonday, 01 March 2010
Was it Chopin’s birthday or wasn’t it? To be honest, no one at last night’s Royal Festival Hall concert probably gave a damn, so wrapped up were they in Maurizio Pollini’s playing. And what playing it was too. The man just sits down and gets on with... Read more... |
Birthdays on the Tube: 28 February-6 MarchSunday, 28 February 2010
Our ongoing series celebrating musicians’ birthdays. This week’s include Lou Reed, in action in a stupendous version of "Venus in Furs" with the Velvet Underground, Chopin played by the wonderful Martha Argerich, archive footage of Miriam Makeba,... Read more... |
Krystian Zimerman, RFHTuesday, 23 February 2010
Beware of Zimermania - or, for that matter, of idolising any pianist as the Greatest Living Interpreter of Chopin. Our birthday boy, 200 years old last night (and not on 1 March), as a crucial baptismal register now seems to prove, is too big for... Read more... |
Murray Perahia, Barbican HallThursday, 18 February 2010
You'll have mazurkas coming out your ears by the end of next month. But what mazurkas they'll be! Fever pitch is approaching as the big pianistic guns line up to celebrate Chopin's 200th birthday anniversary on 1 March. The venerated pianists... Read more... |
Chopin listTuesday, 09 February 2010
While bicentenary homages to Poland's greatest composer have already been flooding in, the big tide that leads up to the birthday on 1 March starts this evening. Artur Pizarro, fresh from personable interpretations of concertos by Ravel and Richard... Read more... |
Poles 'ape-shit' over Chopin filmThursday, 04 February 2010According to award-winning film-maker Tony Palmer, the London Polish Daily newspaper has gone "ape-shit" over the re-release of his dramatised Chopin film, The Strange Case of Delfina Potocka, accusing it of maligning the good name of Chopin/Poland/... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 4Friday, 15 January 2010
Heading up this month's classical selection is a 16-CD budget box set of the complete works of Frédéric Chopin, issued to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the consumptive Pole's birth. Plus we review a rare piano concerto by Ralph Vaughan Williams... Read more... |
Ingrid Fliter, Wigmore HallWednesday, 16 December 2009
Will she? Won't she? Ooh? Ah? No to the Mazurka? Yes to the Barcarolle? We were an audience on tenterhooks last night as flu-ridden Ingrid Fliter coughed and spluttered her way through her Chopin recital at the Wigmore Hall, chopping and... Read more... |
Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore HallMonday, 23 November 2009
Elisabeth Leonskaja, who turned 64 on Sunday, is one of the last links to a grand school of Russian pianism where technique meant the marshalling of piano possibilities into a positively orchestral array of expressive means. Often noted in harness... Read more... |
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