If, like me, your earliest image of Frédéric Chopin comes
from Hollywood's A Song to Remember. If the first thing the
composer's name suggests is a handsome young man seated at a grand piano on a
series of concert stages growing paler and sicker as he plays, wiping the sweat
from his brow, and eventually coughing up that one ominous spot of blood on the
piano keys, the gorgeous music he was playing has likely embedded itself in the
depths of your psyche just as it has in mine. Of course Cornel Wilde playing
Chopin was not the virtuoso playing the piano. That was Jose Iturbi certainly
one of the most popular of the classical pianists of the period, a man that was
to put his recording of Chopin's "Polonaise in A-Flat" on the charts for a reported
four years. And when probably the most popular classical pianist of the current
day, Lang Lang, releases his first album devoted entirely to the solo piano works
of Chopin, it promises perhaps another classical chart topper.
Lang Lang is nothing if not a charismatic performer, and if
there are those that find his playing a bit too flamboyant for their taste,
their voices are generally lost in the pianist's overwhelming success with the
public. Audiences love him. Besides Chopin's music as much as the music of any
of the great composers lends itself to flamboyance, Lang Lang and Chopin would
seem a match made in heaven. The Chopin Album is the proof
of the pudding.
The album begins with the second set of Chopin's Études
(op.25), a dozen studies that the pianist suggests not only provide
"training for . . . many elements of technique," but help
"develop how your mind works, and how you control the different layers of
your emotional response." They are not simply finger exercises, exercises
in technique; as the liner notes point out, they are musically sophisticated
studies sitting at the "center of Chopin's repertoire." Lang Lang
plays them with patented skill and panache.
The album includes three nocturnes, the Andante
Spianato and Grande Polonaise (op. 22), the famous Grande
Valse Brillante in E-Flat Major (op.18), and one of the best known
show pieces in the Chopin canon, the two minute, one "Minute Waltz."
The nocturnes demonstrate that the pianist is capable of restraint when he
wants it. The waltzes get the more showy treatment. As a bonus, for crossover fans there is an
encore of Tristesse in duet with Danish singer/songwriter Oh
Land. If one needs something to complain about, perhaps another solo piano
piece would have been preferable.
In general like Lang's previously released two disc set,Live In
Vienna, The Chopin Album is likely to please those
of us who were at first naïve enough to believe that it was Cornel Wilde
playing that piano and thrilled to the
playing of Jose Iturbi when we knew better, if not always the critics with finer
palates.
A note to those of you too young to have been around in 1945
to see Wilde, Merle Oberon and Paul Muni in that faux Chopin biopic A
Song to Remember (indeed for those of you who want to look back on
the days of your youth), you can see it complete on YouTube, albeit with
Spanish subtitles. It's worth watching
if only for the music.