Chopin’s last piano gets its 19th-century features back
- By Associated Press
- Dec. 9, 2021
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Texas-born expert on historic pianos, Paul McNulty, renovates the last piano that Frederic Chopin played and composed on, at the Chopin museum in Warsaw, Poland, today. The 1848 Pleyel piano was offered to Chopin’s family after his 1849 death by Scottish pianist Jane Stirling, and survived two world wars in Warsaw, but had modern strings put in in the mid-20th century, that destroyed the tone. McNulty aims at bringing it back to its original characteristics.
WARSAW, Poland >> The last piano on which Frederic Chopin played and composed in Paris is being renovated by a U.S. expert who is giving it back its original mid-19th century characteristics.
Paul McNulty is spending days at the Frederic Chopin Museum in Warsaw filling in some cracks in the soundboard and putting in wire strings like the ones used by Paris piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel — Chopin’s favorite — in 1848.
“We’re very, very close to the character and the identity of this instrument when we put the correct strings on, everything else being in very good condition,” McNulty told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Pleyel made the instrument, with serial number 14810, available to Chopin, already seriously ailing at the time, in the fall of 1848. After Chopin’s death in October 1849, the piano was bought by his Scottish student and friend, Jane Stirling, who then offered it to Chopin’s eldest sister, Ludwika Jedrzejewiczowa.
The piano arrived in Warsaw in 1850 — it still bears the red customs seal of Russia that ruled Warsaw at the time. It survived two world wars, including the destruction of the 1944 Warsaw Rising.
Given the provenance and the good condition of the instrument, McNulty said it is “priceless.”
Texas-born McNulty says this is the “best preserved Pleyel piano in the world,” despite having quite a dramatic history. It was played, but treated well by Chopin’s family and was not used for concert performances, also because of a failed renovation attempt.
It had most of its iron wire strings changed for much stronger and tighter modern ones during renovation in the late 1950s that destroyed its tone and put strain on the whole structure.
McNulty and museum authorities believe the current work will bring it as close as possible to the sound that Chopin heard.
“We hope it will sing for us again,” said Aleksander Laskowski, spokesman for The Frederic Chopin Institute that houses the museum.
“So an opportunity to hear the sound of Chopin’s piano as he heard it when he composed is quite likely,” Laskowski said.
McNulty, who has restored and built replicas of hundreds of historical pianos in the past 35 years , says the new sound “will be within the confines, the expectations of the builder.”
The instrument will serve as a resource for research and maybe as a model for a replica, but is not intended for performances.
Among the copies McNulty has made is the 1749 Silberman piano that Johann Sebastian Bach improvised on.
Chopin, Poland’s best known and beloved classical music composer and pianist, was born in 1810 in Zelazowa Wola near Warsaw to a Polish mother and a French father. He left Poland at 19 to broaden his musical education in Vienna and then in Paris, where he settled, composing, giving concerts and teaching the piano.
He died on Oct. 17, 1849, in Paris and is buried at the Pere Lachaise cemetery. His sister Ludwika brought his heart to Warsaw where it is in one of the pillars at the Holy Cross Church.
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rv opiates are good for pain bad for digestive system! mj is good for pain no problem with digestive system opiates and mj have very different effects opiates obliterate the pain mj allows you to find the range of motion that is painful and helps you learn to exercise it carefully so pain diminishes
you will probably be glad you did knee replacement but you will probably never do your other knee
that's my story anyway good luck
one more thing: do your physical therapy exercises conscientiously
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Re: Babayan, Racmaninoff Just got to say that "Lilacs" is the most beautiful piece I have ever heard.And it sounds a lot like "Here comes the sun", only slower and prettier.
Re: French composers Yes indeed, love Rameau, love DebussyBut the French composer I listen to most often is Mompou, and my favorite recording is 3cds by the composer himself.
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Eunice Norton "a classical pianist (who was born in 1908 and died in
2005), whose work I’ve become familiar with almost exclusively from
YouTube clips, of which there are more than a hundred." https://outline.com/vYBJch |
I love having my music stored on external hard drives, so that it is simple to program for hours in advance. I usually make selections before I go to bed. Last night it was Claudio Arrau playing Mozart, still going. Does not get better than this. |
Jim Just an estimate: I have at least 150 Arrau cds. Not cd discs, but copies on my external hard drives.
Doubtless some are duplicates, re-releases. Yes the recording quality on some is not as great as others, but overall it is superior to many other pianists, e.g. Richter. Also noteworthy is what a person he was in the full sense. Improving his mind constantly, aware of political/economic issues, including the tragic overthrow of Allende in his home country. And never a scandal, never an impropriety, never an insult.Just grace, humility, compassion, love.
What a man!
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I have listened to his 2 Bach cds. The first is quite traditional, the second adds electronic musicians (not to my taste).The Glass piano works are fine, but I am not a big fan of Glass, so will say no more. I have not yet found the Rameau/Debussy album which NYT praises so highly. It may not be available yet.
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Tara Kamangar, piano Listening to East of Melancholy Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Glinka, and some other composers less well known (to me) bewitching, very nice indeed cannot find anything more by this pianist
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testing my last 2 posts have disappeared
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testing it's all good, my posts are back!
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Love Cherkassky now listening to 1961 Salzburg Festival he plays some pieces I never appreciated before
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Cherkassky, Samuel Barber, Excursions this piece is so perfect, so funny don't miss
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schubert you say:
"Puccini wasn't picking on Americans,. He was a liberal who was against
the Italian Fighting for colonies in North Africa .If he used an
Italian Navy man he wanted to the Opera would be banned ." If Puccini has used an Italian Navy man, he would not have been composing an opera about Japan. It was USA Commodore Perry that forcibly "opened" Japan in 1854. Italy had nothing to do with it. And what makes you think that Puccini "wanted" to use an Italian Navy man?
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On Madame butterfly, Puccini made extensive use of Japanese melodies. Quite different from "North Africa" melodies. "One of the more striking aspects of exoticism in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is the extent to which the composer incorporated Japanese musical material in his score. From the earliest discussion of the work, musicologists have identified many Japanese melodies and musical characteristics that Puccini used in this work." Kunio Hara
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Puccini based his Madame Butterfly on a short story by John Long, which was based upon a French novel by Pierre Loti. Subsequently, David Belasco wrote a one act play "Madame Butterfly, A Tragedy of Japan" which Puccini saw in Londonin 1900.
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Listening to Vladimir Sofronitsky Liszt, Annees de Pelerinage. recorded 1949-53 takes my breath away, so beautiful, masterful
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from pianostreet:
This performance given by Georges Cziffra took place September 20, 1962
in Montreux, France, under conductor Roberto Benzi with the Orch.
National de la RTF. The live recording was never commercially released
and is not available in any box set. Neither is it available in full on
YouTube, or anywhere else, it appears. It was forwarded to me from a
friend's hard-drive collection. The program was: Grieg Concerto in A minor and Liszt's Totentanz,
with an encore being the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6. As those familiar
with this pianist will tell you, Cziffra's live performances differ a
great deal from his studio recordings, which further diminished with the
sudden death of his son, Cziffra Jr. The significance of this concert
is that, so I believe, Cziffra gives the single greatest performance of
his life and, almost by definition, one of the greatest ever. It truly
has to be heard to be believed, particularly the Totentanz where he not only plays at mind-boggling speeds but openly improvises. The orchestra is also stunning.
01-Track 1.mp3
(10011.8 kB - downloaded 631 times.)
02-Track 2.mp3
(4625.81 kB - downloaded 540 times.)
03-Track 3.mp3
(7785.17 kB - downloaded 425 times.)
04-Track 4.mp3
(11994.53 kB - downloaded 559 times.)
I've attached that encore here.
05-Track 5.mp3
(6129.65 kB - downloaded 1513 times.)
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=49437.0 |
Rachmaninov, Vespers
Live from Southwell
Ex Cathedra, directed by Jeffrey Skidmore, perform Rachmaninov's Vespers.
Carris Jones, mezzo-soprano
Jeremy Budd, tenor
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oops Re: Richter, I meant to say Shostakovich Preludes.
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I listen to a lot of classical music, mostly solo, a lot of piano, with a strong preference for the more ethereal and less bombastic. A good intro is "Great Pianists of the 20th Century", featuring most of the best. The best pianist of my lifetime was Sviatislav Richter, and he made hundreds of recordings. Among my favorites are the Chopin Nocturnes and the Rachmaninoff Preludes. The greatest living pianists today are Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim, and Vladimir Ashkenazy, though I suspect none are playing recitals today, but still conducting. I suspect many of you audiophiles might appreciate Barenboim's "On My New Piano", on which he plays a piano with a little different design, inspired by his visit to and playing of one of Chopin's pianos. Other favorites, dead or alive, old and not so young: Emil Gilels Vladmir Sofronitsky Claudio Arrau Michail Pletnev Evgeny Kissin Grigory Sokolov Andras Schiff Angela Hewitt Aldo Cicollini Martha Argerich
All my recording are high definition (mostly flac), downloaded free torrents off the internet. I find recordings using several sites, and I use QBitorrent to manage the downloads to my external hard drive. My first hard drive (4TB) is full, and the second one (5TB) is now functioning.
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schubert lucky you, seeing all those great pianists live the only one i ever saw was ashkenazy, in a local high school auditorium, back in the days when it was difficult for him to leave USSR
I do appreciate Murray Perahia, especially his Mozart sonatas
and I share your love for Arrau, the consummate master, the total package of dignity, precision and passion held just under the surface - and the inspiration for Argerich as well
twoleftears i will have to give Staier a listen, thanks
as for Bach, I happen to be listening to Richter playing Well Tempered Clavier at this moment another favorite for Bach is Maria Yudina, and I will repeat a story about her that may not be true once she played a radio concert that Stalin heard, it was a live broadcast, not recorded, and Stalin thought it was a recording and liked it so much, he ordered the recording delivered to him immediately so the KGB went out and got Yudina and took her to a studio and made a recording of her previous recital for Stalin.
She hated stalin, whenever she received a medal, she gave it to the families of people Stalin/KGB had killed
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FTM The Andreas Staier 10 cd torrent hash I used is: e389b4a3189aaa6605b61a7930079a3d786abc81 google it, you will fink free links to download
It is 3.35 GB, excellent quality
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twoleftears I downloaded a 10 cd collection of Staier last night, listening to it now, Scarlotti and Bach so far, harpsichord. Excellent, thanks. Another story? This one was told by Edward Said, famous Columbia professor who rewrote the meaning of literary criticism, and then was drawn into advocacy for Palestinians, and throughout was the nyt critic of piano recitals/concerts in nyc, and yes he played classical piano, tho I never heard him. Anyway, story goes Saint Saens won some piano competition in Paris as a child, and was given a visit to Wagner in Germany. This was horse and buggy days, no trains from Paris to Germany in those days. So he arrived at Wagner's and was greeted by both Wagner and Liszt, (they were buddies, hung out together, Wagner married Liszt's daughter). St Saens sits down at the piano, and there is an orchestra score of Tannhauser Overture, which Wagner was working on. As you probably know, that is one of the most complex orchestra scores ever written. St Saens sight-transposes it to piano and plays it through.
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New book on Debussy reviewed: "
He came out of nothing, and the eruption of his genius is a complete
mystery. There was no musical tradition in his very ordinary family.
Within two years of starting to play the piano he was admitted to the
Conservatoire; and two years after that, aged 12, he was being given
prizes for his performance of a Chopin concerto. Almost from the start,
his own music was exquisitely formed, and even the earliest of the songs
and piano pieces give a lot of pleasure.
" . . . "
Walsh’s biography deliberately focuses on the music rather than the
life. Debussy was perhaps not a very likeable person, so this approach
serves to remind us what we most admire about him. Mary Garden, the
first Mélisande, said that he was a ‘very strange’ man; and it does
sometimes appear as if he had no real sympathy for, or interest in,
other people." https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/debussy-the-musical-genius-who-erupted-out-of-nowhere/ |
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rvpiano Yes I saw Ashkenazy in local high school auditorium, nice big auditorium, with a stage, not a cafeteria. In those days he was not allowed to travel freely outside USSR. So programs existed that sponsored a series of recitals, and USSR cooperated with some such programs. That is how Ashkenazy got here. Later he negotiated a deal so he could live in Iceland, then he became a citizen there, and eventually as USSR loosened up more, he moved to Switzerland. Iceland seems "out of it", but in fact it was a sound choice for him, it is a short flight to many of the finest concert halls of Europe. Richter was not allowed to travel to USA until 1960. He wrote that his greatest pleasure was cruising eastern Europe in a car (with Yamaha van, piano and Techs close behind), and holding recitals in obscure town churches on the spur of the moment. Unfortunately I missed Richter's Carnegie Hall debut. My aunt was a graduate student at Julliard, but she could not get tickets.
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kef lover Pogorelich, YES! I have his "complete recording on DG" 14 cds He gives me faith that the tradition is going forward
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Now watching/listening to
Grigory Sokolov plays Schubert, Beethoven, Rameau and Brahms – Recital at the Berliner Philharmonie, 2013
I am stunned at Sokolov's pure musicianship. No show, all go. His technique is so incredible, it seems to make room for more rhythmic nuance than I have ever heard. I have been listening to him for some years, but never saw a video of his performance before this. Remarkable how he mouths the music. Description here: http://facesofclassicalmusic.blogspot.com/2015/10/grigory-sokolov-plays-schubert.html |
Sokolov story He plays all over the world, except in UK. When he tried to get a visa to play in London, they required eye scans. He told them that reminded him too much of USSR, and refused. He was born in Leningrad, USSR, which became St Petersburg, Russia (as it had been before USSR). So he knows.
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Yes I like Anderszewski, a lot
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791 1] Fantasia in c minor K475 . Fantaisie en ut mineur . Fantasie in C-Dur 13:18 Piano Sonata No. 14 in c minor K457 Sonate pour piano en ut mineur . Klaviersonate in C-Dur 2] I. Allegro 8:08 3] II. Adagio 8:44 4] III. Molto allegro 5:49 Robert Schumann 1810-1856 Fantasie C-dur, Op. 17 Fantasia in C major . Fantaisie en ut majeur 5] I. Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen 12:09 6] II. Mäßig, durchaus energisch 8:17 7] III. Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten 11:30 Thema mit Variationen in Es-Dur WoO 24 . Geistervariationen Theme and Variations in E-flat major . Ghost Variations Thème et Variations en mi bémol majeur . Variations “fantômes” 8] Thema - Leise, innig 2:02 9] Variation I 1:30 10] Variation II - Canonisch 1:38 11] Variation III - Etwas belebter 1:39 12] Variation IV 2:06 13] Variation V 2:13 TT: 79:14 Parlophone 2017
Bach English Suites 1, 3, & 5 Warner Classics
Chopin 3 Mazurkas Op 59 3 Mazurkas Op.63 Ballade No. 3, No 4, Polonaise No 5, No 6 Mazurka Op 68 No 4 Virgin Classics
All excellent, would download more if I could find
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Anyone into Komitas? He was an Armenian priest, composer, and pianist, nearly killed by the Turks. Much of his music is based on Armenian folk tunes. Some people today associate his music with Gurdjieff. His background included classical training in Germany. Recordings I have are
Komitas Piano Works (Armen Babakhanian) 2006 (2 cds)
Komitas - Piano and Chamber Music 2017 KOMITAS (KOMITAS VARDAPET) (1869-1935) PIANO AND CHAMBER MUSIC SEVEN FOLK DANCES • SEVEN SONGS TWELVE CHILDREN’S PIECES BASED ON FOLK-THEMES MSHO-SHOROR • SEVEN PIECES FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO MIKAEL AYRAPETYAN, piano VLADIMIR SERGEEV, violin Catalogue No.: GP720 Recording date: 15 December 2013 Recording Venue: Great Hall, Moscow State University of Culture and Arts, Russia
Komitas - Levon Eskenian, The Gurdjieff Ensemble 2015 ECM Records GmbH, Munchen on original Armenian instruments
Zemphira Barseghian, recorded at Harvard, 1993, MEG Recordings (piano, also other composers)
Komitas, many compositions of all sorts Diocesan Records, NY 1970, DR-631, Distributed by Garni
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agree with these comments now listening to casals/serkin beethoven sonatas if i listen for them, i can hear imperfections but then that casals tone takes over, and i am gone I have a picture of casals thibaud and cortot in their young prime they are so certain of themselves, and they have so much reason to be it has not gotten any better technically perhaps yes maybe it has but the musical essence is total and that is what i hear
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FTM When I listed my favorite classical pianists, somehow I left John Ogdon off the list. I especially treasure his Rachmaninoff. I am not really a big fan of Rachmaninoff, but I love the Preludes and the Corelli Variations. Also, when I mentioned Komitas, I left the best recording off the list. Grigory Sokolov plays Komitas, Six Dances for Piano on his "Live in Paris" recording, wwwnaiveclassique.com. Review of a book about Ogdon here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2014/apr/07/john-ogdon-biography-piano-man |
Now listening to Danil Trifonov, the best of the "youngsters" IMO His Carnegie debut recital of 2013. From the DG jacket: The main programme of his Carnegie debut recital presents the quintessence of the tradition to which he is heir: Chopin’s 24 Preludes op. 28 (1839), Liszt’s Sonata in B minor (1854) and Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 “Sonata-Fantasy” (1897), a chain of Romantic works with a kindred spirit, by composers who were themselves all piano virtuosos in their own right.
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Now listening to Rameau keyboard suites, Angela Hewitt.So fine.In fact she is one of my favorites, so listenable.Faure, Back, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Debussy, Couperin, Chabrier,Schumann + many duets and trios
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Now listening to Andrei Diev, piano, "The Fantasies"which includes Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and SchumannsuperbFirst heard of Diev from his recordings of Scriabin in a huge collection (1.50 GB) that also includes Ashkenazy, Weissenberg, Richter, Barenboim conducting Chicago SO, and others. Also love his Rachmaninov Preludes, 1993 Rossijsky instrument, Moscow,produced by Sonopress GmbH GermanyDiev has a youtube channel, mostly Mozart https://www.youtube.com/user/AndreiDiev |
newbee and schubertme tooi love radu lupu, have his complete decca compilation, it is 10 cds of beethoven, brahms, schubert and schumann also his 2 cds of great pianists series, which also includes grieg + some mozart that is included in some Perahia recordingsI am also a big fan of Maria Joao Pires, her chopin nocturnes are my fav, also love her Mozart Sonatas, as well as several Schubert recordingsincluding duets with Ricardo Castro, and her "great pianists" cds. Appreciate Moravek tooThe only Goode recording I have is Brahms clarinet sonata,
duet with Stolzman. Will have to look for more.
Angelich and Cooper are new to me, thanks for the tip
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Many thanks for recommending Imogen Cooper. I was never a big fan of Schumann or Brahms, but her recordings are superb.
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