Chopin Week: the Preludes

By Ivan Hewett Published: 3:40PM GMT twenty-four Feb 2010

In the winter of 1838-39, Chopin and his partner George Sand set off to the Balearic Islands to shun the Parisian winter. Chopin took with him the to a little extent finished publishing of his Preludes, and Bachs 48 Preludes and Fugues. These were his ever-present guide as he composed.

The outing was a disaster. The continue was soppy and freezing, the locals were unfriendly, and Chopin and Sand were cramped to the nunnery of Valdemosa for weeks on end. Worse, Chopin was coughing blood. "My seizure has played massacre with my Preludes, and God knows when you will embrace them," he wrote to a friend. "Covered in poultices, Im yearning for spring, or something or other."

Chopin Week: the Ballades Chopin Week: the Etudes Chopin Week: the Mazurkas Chopin Week: the sonatas Other TV Highlights: Monday sixteen Mar Other TV highlights: week finish 22/23 Feb

The actuality that Chopin could harmonise at all in these resources is a miracle. What he essentially constructed was the majority undiluted and finish countenance of his genius. He took the early 19th-century thought of "preluding" improvising a couple of bars to set up a sure mood prior to starting something critical and done it a correct genre in the own right. By cast of characters the Preludes in a set of 24, one for each vital and teenager key, he done a mortified try to obey the earnest of Bachs 48, that does the same thing twice.

The Preludes target for comprehensiveness additionally in summoning up each mood and each kind of piano hardness stream at the time and a little that contingency have seemed unprecedented. Sand wrote: "Some are honeyed and charming, soft and tender, but a little are unhappy and wan, and whilst pleasant the ear additionally rip at the heart" that is true, but thats not the half of it.

There are ardent operatic scenes (no. 18), bright laments that receptive to advice similar to complicated song (no. 2), glittery washes of receptive to advice that expect Ravel (no. 23) and, to finish with, a Polish overthrow as grand as anything in Chopins large-scale pieces.Alfred Cortots 1933 version is magical, though a little might find the antiquated receptive to advice and character an obstacle. Ivan Moravecs 1976 recording is undiluted and intimate, whilst Alexandre Tharauds new version is vividly dramatic.

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