Chopin's 200th birthday celebration, live from Warsaw

This is it, Chopin’s big one. The Polish composer was born March 1, 1810. And Warsaw, it is hardly surprising, is the place to be for the mother of all the Chopin celebrations. If you've got a few hundred of the new 20 zloty Chopin banknotes (pictured, and worth about $7) and happen to be in the Polish capital -- and if you know a black marketeer dealing in scalped concert tickets -- you might be able to catch the Galowy Koncert Symfoniczny birthday event Monday night. The rest of us can, at 11 a.m. (West Coast time), click on to Chopin 2010 for a live webcast.

The program will begin with the Chinese pianist Yundi (who won Warsaw's Chopin Competition in 2000 when he was Yundi Li ) playing solo Chopin selections. Next Garrick Ohlsson (1970 Chopin Competition winner replacing an indisposed Martha Argerich, class of '66) will be soloist in the First Piano Concerto conducted by Antoni Wit, leading the Warsaw Philharmonic in music they’ve played a million times. The most intriguing aspect of the program, though, will be the Vietnamese pianist Dang Thai Son (who was the first Asian to take top honors at the Chopin Competition in 1980) performing the Second Concerto on a 19th century period piano. He will be accompanied by the Dutch early music specialist Frans Bruggen leading his Orchestra of the 18th Century, which hasn’t played the Chopin concertos a million times.

And to make up for another Argerich no-show, Deutsche Grammophon has just released “Argerich Plays Chopin,” a CD of recently discovered early broadcast recordings she made in Germany. It begins with her setting afire Chopin’s First Ballade in a studio in Berlin in 1959, when “the exceptionally attractive Argentine pianist,” to quote the CD booklet notes, was an impressively impulsive 17.

The remainder of the disc contains performances from 1967, two years after Argerich won the Chopin Competition, which turned her into a star. According to DG’s breathless prose, that win proved more dazzling than such 1965 news as a Soviet cosmonaut’s first walk in space, Louis Armstrong’s first East Berlin appearance or the first woman to win the Peace Prize from the German Publishers Guild.

Well, she really was exciting (still is), and it is a thrill indeed to hear her find hidden messages in mazurkas and set the sparks flying one moment and turn impossibly seductive the next in the Third Piano Sonata.

Happy birthday Fryderyk.

-- Mark Swed

Related story:

Poland throws bash for Chopin's 200th

Photo credit: Associated Press

Comments

[Matthew Bailey]

Very interesting article indeed, sadly I missed this concert but I am checking YouTube for footage. However, I noticed as I was away on business, a new concept of comparing different interpretations of Chopin compositions by some great piansists. It looks like it is part of a series of albums. I discovered it on amazon, "Chopin Bicentennial Comparative Series - Volume 1". I wonder what other people think of this approach.

[Christopher Forkel]

Why everything related to Chopin has to return to Argerich? I am wondering. She is a good pianist, but very often she plays Chopin not very well: in a constant hurry, sometimes unsupported, and often (unfortunately recently) not in such great taste (huge rubatos that would make Frederic turn in his grave).
Why is this woman so sensational? Yes, she was beautiful, yes she played well, yes she married a lot of times, yes, she was loved by a lot of people. But where are all the other great players of Chopin, equally, if not more gifted: Stefanska, Harasiewitz, Neuhaus, Gilels, Zimermann, Gavrilov, Zak, Ashkenazy??? (Just to name a few, and I am sure I leave out a lot of great names.)
And the First Chopin Ballade??? Hear Ricther's recording and compare it with Argerich...Come on, give me a break!
Why everything related to Chopin has to go back to Argerich???

Please, tell me, enlighten me, because as a professional musician I don't understand it.

[Dr. Wilfred Arnold]

“Chopin’s illness” 10 minutes

hold down Ctrl key and click:
http://cas.umkc.edu/Chemistry/kcacs/Chopin%20illness%20and%20heart/index.html
after it opens, select “Full Screen” from the “View” menu

“Vincent van Gogh and the thujone connection” 10 minutes

hold down Ctrl key and click:
http://cas.umkc.edu/Chemistry/kcacs/Vincent%20van%20Gogh%20and%20the%20thujone%20connection/index.html
program will start automatically after 5 seconds on the title slide.
select “Full screen” under the “View” menu.