20 March 2010

Chopin Year -- The Best Kept Secrets in Germany -- Just

Any classical music lover will know that in this Chopin Year (200th anniversary), new and old Chopin recordings will abound. Who wouldn't make business with the slightest excuse? It's almost like St. Valentine's Day. But does anyone, or at least the recording companies, pay much attention to the fact that 2010 is also the 200th birth-year of Robert Schumann? If you prefer round numbers, it is also the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the birth of Stravinsky and Mahler respectively.

So much for numbers. 



Chopin box-sets and sales will be taken for granted, but even if there are copious choices, we still have to make them. I opt for the box-set from the Eloquence series in Germany. It is a generous box, to say the least of it. It is not the usual box-set that once you've taken a glimpse of the detailed listing of pianists playing the works you'll put it back to the shelf of the shop. Here you can almost have all the top recordings for each particular work, of course among Universal artists and recordings only. I say almost because for example the Nocturnes are played by Barenboim, at least not my first choice. It is unusual to see in a Chopin box-set the first Piano Concerto being played by Arrau, and the second by Pogorelich, and the Preludes by Argerich, etc.

Then the Chopin disc by Olga Scheps, which is on sale only in Germany and not even in the UK or Japan. She has fine pianistic attributes beneath her pretty-looking face. Her touch is exquisite and she dares to take risks too. Not at all a boring debut Chopin disc.

I can envisage that I'll have many evenings bathed in the romanticism of Chopin.

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