Garrick Ohlsson- winner of the 1970 Chopin Competition, one of the greatest Chopin specialists of our time, honored during the 2018 August Chopin and His Europe festival with the Gloria Arts Gold Medal- has recorded two Chopin recitals for The Fryderyk Chopin Institute: one on modern piano, the other on period piano. The same program in two different sound versions. This is now The Fryderyk Chopin Institute’s fourth such double album; these albums are of extraordinary knowledge-building value, permitting sensitive listeners to acquaint themselves with the particular beauty of early instruments in confrontation with their modern version. Garrick Ohlsson’s newest recordings acquaint us more closely with Chopin in two different ways, in both cases with the greatest of expertise in his music. For this recording, Garrick Ohlsson selected genres characteristic of Chopin: a ballade, nocturnes, a scherzo, mazurkas. The artist played this recital on a Steinway piano.
This new, outstanding live release featuring esteemed pianist Martha Argerich was recorded in Warsaw in 2006 at the Chopin and His Europe International Music Festival. For this programme, she performs one of her favorite Concertos: Shostakovich’s First. She is joined from the podium by her long-time musical partner Alexander Rabinovich. Also featured on this recording is the light-spirited Symphony No. 9, also by Shostakovich. The International Music Festival ‘Chopin and his Europe’ – an international music festival organized in Warsaw since 2005 by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, presenting European music within the context of its links with the life and work of the Polish pianist, composer and teacher Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849). The project is realized as part of the government programme ‘Fryderyk Chopin Heritage 2010’. One important strand to the festival programme is historical performance – presenting works as they were originally heard, on period pianos in the possession of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute: an Erard from 1849, a Pleyel from 1846 and a Graf (a copy of an instrument from c. 1819). The festival is organized in collaboration with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera and Polish Radio II.
Poland had three contestants left in the Third Stage of the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, and only one went through to the Grand Final concerto round. So the country's hopes were resting on Szymon Nehring, and although few would have tipped him as a winner he enjoyed understandable support in the hall and countrywide, winning the Audience Prize in the final analysis. The Krakow-born pianist, who had just turned 20 when the competition opened, certianly aroused interest with his playing. Reviewing his Second Stage appearance in the Chopin Courier, Kacper Miklaszewski said, ''The search for subtlety took away a bit of clarity from the interpretations of Szymon Nehring, who nevertheless built a convincing dramaturgy in the Polonaise in F sharp minor.'' Getting across all the hurdles in this most demanding of competitions, Nehring certainly proved his worth by the time he stepped out to play the Piano Concerto in E minor in a performance that mixed muscularity and gracefulness. Showing qualities that in retrospect can also be found here in performances recorded earlier in the competition, he found the sweep of the concerto's first movement and the dreaminess of the second, before dispatching the rhythms of the ifnale with a natural, native flexibility. It was a well-rounded performance that justified his place as a laureate.
