Some thoughts on the Chopin Preludes during Stage II of the 2025 International Chopin Piano Competition, Warsaw
Lake and Temple at Arkadia In Stage II of the Chopin Piano Competition we listened to many interpretative examples of the Chopin Preludes For this reason before you read my reviews: Some thoughts on the Chopin Preludes Schumann famously and memorably referred to them as 'sketches, beginnings of Etudes, or, so to speak, ruins, individual eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusion.' Improvisation or 'préluder' before embarking on an extensive work in the same key was well established among composer-pianists of the day but has been largely abandoned except by those few knowledgeable performers on the period piano. Chopin was a master of ambiguity and luring the listener into false expectations. He often performed the Preludes as separate pieces or in groups possibly arranged in pairs. One reads in his 1842 Parisian recital: ' Nocturnes, Préludes and Etudes'. In those days there was far less academic att...
