CHOPIN: Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57; Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 1; Tarantella in A-flat Major, Op. 43; Bolero in C Major, Op. 19; Rondo in C Minor, Op. 1; Variations in B-flat Major on Mozart’s “La ci darem la mano,” Op. 2; Rondo in E-flat Major, Op. 16; Polonaise in D Minor, Op. 71, No. 1; Allegro de Concert in A Major, Op. 46 – Nikolai Demidenko, piano
Narodowy Instytut Frederyka Chopina NIFCCD 014, 78:23 [Distr. by Allegro] ****:
Performing on a period (1848) Pleyel fortepiano, Nikolai Demidenko (b. 1955) makes exquisite sense of a number of Chopin’s youthful works, many of them his “calling cards” for Vienna c. 1830-1832 after Chopin emigrated from Poland. The Berceuse (1844) provides an obvious exception, its brilliant simplicity offered as a melody and fourteen variants on a single modulation, the ornaments cascading in thirds, sixths, ninths, and double triples at the highest octave, as required. A fascinating study in harmonic rhythm, the piece has Demidenko’s exploiting the delicate frame of his Pleyel (82 keys) for a brittle yet exuberant sound that approximates the sonic world with which Chopin was conversant. From that same year, 1841, Demidenko includes the Allegro de Concert, a likely vestige of an aborted third piano concerto. Some years ago, both Alicia de Larrocha and Claudio Arrau championed this imposing piece, a hybrid of fantasy and ballade but curiously neither. Demidenko asserts its lyric impulse, the national songs that inform its plastic but elusive structure.
The left hand figurations that define the Nocturne in C-harp Minor (1836) imbue the piece with mystery, while the piu mosso descends into a darker more militant world rife with both national and personal pain. Another late piece, the happy Tarantelle (1841) attests to Chopin’s Mediterranean sensibility; and here, the Pleyel (rec. 2008) projects a hard patina in the flying staccati and bravura runs that quite captivates our ears and our impatient feet. While we can argue whether the Bolero of 1834 prefers A Minor to its usual designation of C Major, Demidenko obviously cherishes this brilliant piece, especially its galant opening and its polonaise-like explosion, “Allegro vivace.” That Chopin fuses a Spanish idiom to his Polish nature seems a curious but rich experiment, and the melody in A Major shines in the Pleyel’s crisp textures. Demidenko’s strong rendition will occupy a place near my own favorite, that by Mieczyslaw Horszowski.
The Op. 1 Rondo by Chopin (1825) testifies to an exuberant–and disarmingly expansive–keyboard technique from a then fifteen-year-old composer. Already an idiosyncratic approach to harmony infiltrates the piece; and the conception of the keyboard as a singing instrument defines much of the filigree, some of which adumbrates the A-flat Etude, Op. 25, No. 1 and the lyrical opening of the Andante spianato, Op. 22. The leaping figures tell us, retrospectively, how close the Krakowiak Rondo was to Chopin’s fertile imagination. The Warsaw sensibility likewise informs the E-flat Rondo, Op. 16 (1832), a piece rife with colorful modulations and sweeping gestures, youthful, ardent, and eminently aristocratic in its stile brillante.
The only polonaise on the program, the 1825 D Minor, was published posthumously, since Chopin felt it unfit for inclusion in his official corps of compositions. To us, its exclusion seems unwarranted, as it reveals all of the traits that Chopin would later refine for his body of six or seven great polonaises. Panache, a sense of the entire keyboard, an elegant finesse, and a capacity for bold gesture permeates every bar of the national dance, which plays as both delicate and inflamed by turns. The Op. 2 Variations on Mozart’s duet from Don Giovanni (1827) had critic Robert Schumann lauding Chopin’s genius. The introductory fioritura, the four-part structure of the five variations and ensuing polacca, remain both faithful to Mozart’s dramma giocoso and extend the musical possibilities outward – at once a paraphrase and a brilliant demonstration of idiosyncratic musical acumen.
— Gary Lemco
