Shaping Chopin: Waltzes, Mazurkas, Nocturnes

Album Description

Anna Fedorova is at home in the Romantic period, she knows it’s repertoire inside out and has proven this several times. In addition to previous recordings of Liszt, Schumann or Scriabin, she shines especially with Russian composers such as Rachmaninoff and as a Youtube star, her interpretation of his 2nd Piano Concerto has more than 30 million clicks,  and Chopin is also no blank slate for her. Already in her albums Four Fantasies (2018) and Storyteller (2019), both released on Channel Classics, she pays tribute to the Polish-French composer, devoting herself to his ballads as well as fantasies, among other works. In Shaping Chopin, she now devotes herself fully to his most famous genres and conjures up an extensive program for us with a selection of his most beautiful mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes as well as fantasies on record.

Live concerts in 2021 unfortunately remain relatively quiet, but instead we experience a real flowering of lockdown albums recorded in the previous year. For Anna Fedorova, it was Chopin who accompanied her during this period and whom she re-met in a new way. Already in the first piece Grande Valse Brillante Op.18 the name speaks for itself. Fedorova interprets the piece in an extremely fast tempo, but this does not detract at all from the waltz itself. Due to her extremely precise keystrokes as well as her, already repeatedly praised, amazing technical skills, the dances seem like child's play for her. The same applies to the following Waltzes Op. 34, Op. 42 and Op. 64, which she expresses with a dancing lightness and at the same time, with extremely strong and sensitive dynamics, however one does not exclude the other. This effect, on the other hand, diminishes somewhat in the two Nocturnes Op. 27. Here one would have wished for a little more calmness and time. The concluding Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66, however, makes up for this. In an incredibly lively and energetic interpretation, she draws us back into her Romantic spell. Listeners are certainly getting their money's worth! © Lena Germann/Qobuz