Artur Rubinstein plays Chopin

Advantages: A discovery unforgettable
Disadvantages: Nothing

...difficult in the same time. I try to do it: 1) He make a full immersion in historycal background of Chopin; 2) He loved to study hand-written Chopin's music; 3) Like he said, he stopped to learn a work when "sounds flow in my blood". 4) An intelligent control by means of mind and heart. He plays Chopin's Nocturnes suspended in "time": night is not only darkness, mystery or passions; night in Chopin is without time also... This Arturo understood and now we can hear a strange dimension of time. Of course, there are passions, loves, cryes but these are nothing...in front of a world without time. Often Nocturnes seem lullabyes: it is true! But they send to sleep the death not the listeners! Then, these musics are a victory on the death! Other pianists have played these Chopin's works: Horowitz, Schnabel, Pollini, Richter... Some years... Read review

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Advantages: beautiful piano pieces.
Disadvantages: are you kidding...none!

...I play the piano freqeuntly. As a result i come across many composers. Of them all, chopin is my favourite. With his singing melodie, and wonderous chromatic passages he is easily the greatest composer, poetically. Chopin's nocturnes are among the most popular of his works, and this style is most famous for Chopin, even thought it was originally created by an Irish compose named John Field. The 3 nocturnes that make up Op.9 were written in 1830-1831 and were published in 1832, the year Chopin became succesful. These 3 pieces were dedicated to Camile Moke Pleyel, a very tallented pianist and wife of one of France's most famous piano manufactures. Op.9 No.1 is currently the most performed of all his nocturnes. Op.15 was written at about the same time as Op.9 except for Op.15 No.3. This was written in 1833. This Opus was dedicated... Read review

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Advantages: Haunting, passionate music to get lost in.
Disadvantages: It's classical and this puts people off before they even try it.

...interrupt it - particularly something as mundane as housework. Floon and I are obviously not alone in finding the quintet special. This music has aroused the passions of many and the notes say” Many musicians have spoken in awe of its spiritual Elysianism, including the pianist Artur Rubinstein (who requested the slow movement be played at his funeral), the great nineteenth-century cellist Alfredo Piatti (who asked for it to be played during his dying hours to send him into the next world), and the renowned quartet leader John Saunders who had the opening seven bars of the first movement’s second subject inscribed on his tombstone above the following Shakespearian quotation (Sonnet XVIII): So long as man can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. String Quintet in C Major, D956 (1828) The title conveys... Read review

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