My Favorite Chopin

My Absolute Favorite Chopin Album

If I was stuck on a deserted island this would be one the albums I would want with me! I have loved this album deeply since I was a child and will listen to it the rest of my life. In my book no one can touch Van Cliburn playing Chopin. Truly inspired. October 21, 2007

Truly a life-altering recording.

This recording was instrumental in influencing the direction my life would take.

I wore out a vinyl copy of this recording when I was young. This album of Chopin as played by Van Cliburn spoke to me as a 10-year-old child. It comforted me through the death of close friends and inspired me to keep practicing the piano through the turbulent teen years. I came back to it many years later after pursuing a M.M. degree in music and found that it still held up. It is as inspiring, technically amazing, and as wonderful as I remember it as a child.

What I also find outstanding about this recording is the clarity and quality of the recorded sound. It sounds like it was recorded recently with the latest technology when it was actually recorded in 1961! Indeed, I prefer it over the quality of many "modern" discs I own.

My love of the piano led me to become a concert piano technician specializing in Steinway. When I learned to voice pianos I found I no longer liked most of the piano recordings in my collection. On the other hand, this recording only got better. I hold the piano in this recording as the ideal representation of the incomparable tone of the New York Steinway. When I voice a piano, my goal is to draw from it the warmth, color, and sheer beauty of tone found in this recording. I would be interested to know where this piano is today.

As the technician for a respected symphony orchestra in the U.S., I have tuned for many of the world's great pianists - including Van Cliburn. So it has come full circle. In my mind this is truly one of the top piano recordings of the twentieth century and Van Cliburn is one of its great pianists. April 22, 2007

The Best Classical Piano Album of All Time

I loved this album so much I have bought it four times; I wore out two vinyl copies and a CD. This is the best pianist of the 20th century playing some of the best piano music ever written. Van Cliburn's meteoric rise to fame was no accident. His effortless technical perfection, his ability to play the great works with feeling and grandeur are unique. On this album he has chosen 8 tracks that demonstrate the incredible breadth of Chopin's piano music.

It opens with the stirring `Heroic' Polonaise, a piece found in many Chopin collections, but often played badly. Too many pianists treat this with exaggerated rubato, or worse as a race to finish as fast as possible. Chopin despised wildly exaggerated tempos (he kept a metronome on his student's piano at all times). Cliburn plays it as it was intended - with strength and majesty.

Following is the 19th Nocturne, a deeply introspective mood piece played with great feeling, its harp-like ending one of the most beautiful in classical music.

The Fantaise is Chopin's longest work, a powerful piece blending many themes of great beauty. Its mournful adagio section provides a tranquil interlude between many restless and turbulent passages.

Next are two of Chopin's popular Etudes, `Winter Wind', which boils and swirls up and down the keyboard, a piece of great technical difficulty perfectly played. The E major etude is by the composer's own admission "the most beautiful melody" he had ever penned.

The Ballade in A flat is infrequently recorded; a bright and happy piece who's dance-like opening statement comes back over and over in many delightful forms. Concluding with a great flourish, its easy to see why Cliburn chose this as a favourite; its fun to play. It is followed by the well known Waltz in C# minor.

The album concludes with the powerful Scherzo in C# minor, an intense and often wild piece, with startling contrasts in mood from dark thundering octaves of the main theme, to the beautiful cascading arpeggios; it is Chopin at the peak of his creativity.

You would never guess that MFC was recorded in 1961; this re-mastered production has bell-like clarity, better than many more recent piano recordings. If you buy only 1 Chopin album, this is the one.
April 27, 2006

Van Cliburn

Van Cliburn is one of the best classical pianist of all times. He plays Chopin beautifully as he does any music. I am amazed that anyone would write a bad review about his playing. March 11, 2006

for the most part horrific (with a couple exceptions)

The playing here is so bad that I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I saw the label "Van Cliburn". It is hard to even know where to begin. The simple trills in the C shape waltz are not cleanly played leading to a disequilibrium in timing (it would be a hard argument to make that Cliburn inserted rubato here... it is quiet obvious that this is a slip caused by the trill). In the subsequent theme Cliburn plays stacatto with no pedal. Some pianists tend to play staccato here... but with no pedal? The pedal goes hand in hand with waltzes during the oom (followed by the pah-pah).
It gets much much worse. The Heroic polonaise is played so badly its truely unbelievable. Again no phrasing, nonchalant staccatoish playing, no reaching for a climax.
The winter wind etude, which ironically is technically harder than the abovementioned pieces is played well and cleanly... I like this track.

Van Cliburn falls into the category of pianists that play concertos better than solo pieces.
Chopin is very hard.... we can't deal with Lisztian aggressivness, nor Schoenbergenian anarchism, nor Mozartian tranquility/lucidity.... Chopin is a special niche and one must find the correct balance of delicate yet virtuosic playing.
This CD really tilts the balance of Van Cliburn for me in the negative. Another review I posted shows my positive view of his Tchaikovsky and my less positive view of his Rachmaninov. But how can I judge him favorably with this CD in mind.
January 13, 2006

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