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Linn4
I grew up listening to Rubinstein and Horowitz play Chopin, followed by the Russians Richter and Gilels. The next generation included Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy. I reached a mid-life point where I wondered if there was much more to say in Chopin and practically gave up listening.
This was not altogether a false perception. Unless you are Polish and buy into national-hero worship, Chopin does not have much more to say in his music beyond a certain introverted sentimentality and post-coital sadness. Or so it seems to me.
So I never attended the Chopin Competition in Warsaw for fear of terminal ennui. Knowing, too, that no winners emerged in the 1990s rather confirmed my suspicion that we had reached the limits of Chopin expression. There is another Chopin competition coming up next month and I may be proved wrong. Meanwhile, practically the only Chopianist I care to listen to is Ingrid Fliter, an Argentine who took second place in Warsaw quarter of a century ago.
One of the last soloists to be signed by EMI Classics before its collapse, Fliter all but gave up public concerts, retiring to Italy to raise a child. Her new set of Mazurkas is, in parts, a revelation. She intuits things other pianists miss. In the sixth of her mazurkas there is a melancholy you could cut with a butter knife. In others, she dances to the end of love (as Leonard Cohen would have it). Ingrid Fliter is always interesting. Her Fazioli might be a celestial lyre, angel pure. Linn often produces the most lucid piano tone on record.
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