© AI Training forbidden - Selected Classical Music in the Poland of Chopin - Reviewer's Notebook

The Royal Castle in Warsaw offered a spectacular backdrop to President Joe Biden and the Polish President Andrzej Duda who addressed thousands of Poles in the castle gardens on the Vistula River (Associated Press) U.S. President Joe Biden stands onstage with children waving flags after he delivered remarks ahead of the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, outside the Royal Castle, in Warsaw, Poland, February 21, 2023 ( Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters ) This remarkable visit was of great symbolic significance to me as I have watched this valiant nation once again implement their immortal Polish battle cry though the ages 'For your freedom and ours!' The distinguished publisher  Granta released my literary travel book on Poland in 2008. It covered my period working and my cultural explorations in Warsaw and further afield during the period of transition from  the Soviet hegemony   t o the so-called market economy  in the early ...

Just to highly recommend this absolute treasure chest of revelatory Chopin Mazurkas released by the National Chopin Institute. I could not possibly review every one of these outstanding performances but each is an eloquent and idiomatic approach. Historical recordings to the present. This two-album release of 'Best Mazurkas' is a collection of Chopin's most intimate works in the interpretations of the prizewinners of the prestigious and perceptive Polish Radio Award for the best performance of mazurkas in the International Chopin Competition. The recordings are an interesting perspective, a multitude of interpretations of the Polish idiom in those fascinating pieces; performances of artists who sometimes come from very distant cultures surprise us with their freshness despite time irresistibly passing. They are frequently a new reading of the composer's intentions. Great and important names of the world pianism are all to be found on this one blue release: Henryk Sztomp...

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995)   There is little need for me to introduce Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, one of the greatest pianists and musicians of all time.  I have been listening to a remarkable live recording of a concert he gave in Warsaw in 1955. His Bach/Busoni Chaconne from the Partita in D minor No.2 BWV 1004 is surely one of the greatest ever recorded.   Michelangeli's    knowledge and command of the piano as an instrument was unequaled, permitting his soul and ours to take unhindered flight. His total identification with the music, his majestic 'Olympian' and 'Apollonian' playing has often been described as 'unearthly' even to the point of bordering on the cold classicism of a perfect Athenian statue. I once heard him play Debussy and Beethoven many years ago  in the Royal Festival Hall in London, performing  on two distinct Steinway concert grand pianos, one for each composer, individually tuned and prepared by himself. His hea...

Don Juan  and  Zerlina   (British Library) NIFCCD 141-142 A scene from Bizet's opera  Carmen A degree of vertigo overwhelms me when I begin to consider the kaleidoscopic life of  Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838). He was  the speedy Mozart librettist of  Le nozze di Figaro (1786); Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1789). Constant   unexpected reversals of fortune in his life led to massive changes of plan that plagued this intense  improviser on life's stage. The insanely disconnected and illogical events of his long-lived destiny  are introduced piecemeal into the opera plot.  Da Ponte became immensely successful as a result of the libretto for the opera A Rare Thing (1786)   by  Vicente Martín y Soler (1754-1806) , one of the great musical successes of the time,  comfortably outdoing Mozart in Vienna despite the success of Figaro. He wrote in his Memoires: 'We might have had more amorous a...

The Eliot Quartet Maryana Osipova, Violin Alexander Sachs, Violin Dimitry Hahalin, Viola Michael Preuss, Cello Dimitry Ablogin, Piano CD:  GENUIN  GEN 22784 And yet another CD spins on my player, one of many that regularly come my way. The title of this disc  Le temps retrouvé   intrigued me as it irresistibly gave rise in my memory of reading long ago that great work  À la Recherche du Temps Perdu  by Marcel Proust. The title became a semantic analogy of a madeleine dipped in tea.  César Franck (1822-1890) The emotional impact of the music and performance on this disc by the Eliot Quartet (named after T. S. Eliot and his poem  Four Quartets,  itself inspired by the late Beethoven quartets) and the distinguished Russian pianist Dimitry Ablogin. His exceptional performances  have often been reviewed on this internet journal  and his numerous international awards, such as the 10th International German Pia...