My 16yo daughter has agreed to learn and her music teacher has agreed to teach her a Chopin piece. I'm not quite sure which one she should tackle. I need some suggestions. What is/are your favorite Chopin piece(s). Please include any etudes and mazurkas you likenot solely his polonaises.
I like the Preludes. It's good to listen to all of them all in one go, in sequence, but 8 and 17 are my favourites.
10 and 21 are relatively easy; some of the others are most definitely not; 14 is quite a short one but none of them are long. The Polonnaises are great but challenging to play.
youtu.be/CVL4XPLluXk
Prelude no 4 might be a good one for a 16 year old learner:
FYI, for anyone in the UK interested, there will be a BBC4 radio programme on the life and struggles of Chopin and how it influenced his compositions on the 27th March at 11.30am titled 'Robert Winston's Musical Analysis'.
If you can view/hear this: bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dhrml/Robert_Winstons_Musical_Analysis_Series_3_Tchaikovsky/
you will be able to catch next week's episode on Chopin a day after broadcast. I think it may be only available for those with UK ip addresses, though.
I am listening to performances on 4th day of 17th edition of Chopin Competition. Critics claim that the pianists are technically perfect. What matters, then, to win the competition, is this sublime impalpable atmosphere they create with their music.
youtube.com/embed/0kwQZopTLEw
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Chopin_Piano_Competition The International Chopin Piano Competition (Polish: Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina), often referred to as the Chopin Competition, is a piano competition held in Warsaw, Poland. It was initiated in 1927 and has been held every five years since 1955. It is one of few competitions devoted entirely to the works of a single composer,[1] in this case, Frédéric Chopin.
Don't want to sound condescending but coming from a family of musicians I would say that her teacher is the best person to choose the piece, based on your daughter's abilities and technical skill, unless you are a pianist yourself, in which case you should reach a conclusion after discussion with her teacher. My sister is a singer and harpist, my mother a singer and pianist. That's how the pieces were chosen when my sister was beyond the beginner stage.
Greatest, i.e. most satisfying, performances to date of Chopin's waltzes and mazurkas are by Dinu Lipatti! All else, of course, by the Polish-American pianist Josef (Joźió) Kazimierz Hofmann, including the Nocturnes and Etudes:-)
Szopen was a great patriot... now in Poland we have Fake Teeth Schetyna, Ginger loser TuSSk and Borsuk Budka that gonna sale Poland to EU elitist leftrads without blinking.... Chopin must be turning over in his grave.... sadly.
