© AI Training forbidden - Selected Reviews of Chopin performances and Other Matters in Poland

  Dmitry Ablogin Haydn + This is the title under which the magnificent Freiburg Baroque Orchestra celebrated the start of its new concert season on October 8th. In the fully occupied Freiburg Concert Hall, the FBO played one of its heartfelt composers: Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 101 in D major , nicknamed 'The Clock', is on the program, as well as the overture to Haydn's opera 'Armida' , two works that Haydn wrote on his legendary concert tours to London in 1792 and 1794 brought great acclaim. In addition they played music by a composer whom the FBO had completely rediscovered - Haydn's contemporary and protégé Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a child prodigy at the piano, later an acclaimed piano virtuoso and visionary composer.  The FBO performed Hummel's second piano concerto in A minor Op.85 (1816) with the pianist Dmitry Ablogin as soloist. They have a close stylistic connection and share a special and spontaneously creative musical relationship. He chose...

Friends of Chopin Australia A musical and cultural renaissance  is currently flowering between Australia and Poland based on the compositions of Fryderyk Chopin   Join Orava Quartet and pianist Aleksandra Świgut for a performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 not to be missed. Consummate artists in their own right, together they will treat us to a performance unlike any you’ve heard before. Rounding out the program with some Chopin works for solo piano, Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa, and Krysztof Penderecki’s 3 rd  String Quartet. I have always felt the performance of the quartet version of the concerto is a remarkable complement to that with the full orchestra. It gives a suitable chamber music feel to the entire work which reveals an intimacy rarely encountered. and  9-10 December 2023 Kyohei Sorita in Recital  Sydney Conservatorium of Music, SYDNEY 9-10 Dec 2023 World-renowned Japanese superstar pianist Kyohei Sorita performs in Sydney for the firs...

Thoughts and Highlights from Stage I DAY 1 Without what might appear as hyperbole and gross exaggeration, this competition is surely a unique event in the musical life of Europe and the world. I remember when the idea of a Chopin Competition on period pianos was first mooted over five years ago, how this concept was met with a degree of derision and scorn except from musicians with vision and the experience of playing instruments of the period, evoking that rare, irreplaceable soundscape and 'opening the doors of perception' of former times.  With technological advances, we are moving exponentially further and further from the source of this sublime music, ravaged rather by the our constructed notion of linear time. The preservation and context of these precious lost worlds of sound has massively advanced in importance. The range of original and newly crafted period pianos assembled in Warsaw for this competition is greater than ever as are the number of experienced applicants ...

  The last  Pleyel  (No.  14810) piano played by Fryderyk Chopin  Fryderyk Chopin Museum, Warsaw  A Different Virtuosity Pearls of the Period Piano in Warsaw The mystery of instrumental sound and performance before recording has become an irresistible lure in classical music. Even before 1800 musicians were becoming increasingly interested in the nature of 'ancient music' if not so much in the manner in which it was performed. Baron Gottfried van Swieten contributed to Mozart's love of Handel and Bach in Vienna.  Interest increased over the intervening years with the evolution of the humanist scholarly discipline of 'musicology'. Through the exciting explorations during the 1970s up to the present day, the so-called 'Early Music' movement and its now mainstream credibility has expanded exponentially in scope. This movement has become firmly established in Europe on the period piano,   notably in Warsaw. Inevitably musicological interest an...