Hyperion PIAS Archive

CHOPIN: 24 Mazurkas – Pavel Kolesnikov, p. – Hyperion

by Audiophile Audition | Sep 17, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

A solid and sensuous reading of Chopin’s most prolific national vehicle.  CHOPIN: 24 Mazurkas – Pavel Kolesnikov, p. – Hyperion CDA68137, 69:19 (9/2/16) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****: Chopin took the genre of the Polish mazurka and made it his own, composing some 58 “official” works, making it the most active vehicle for his experiments in the form. Chopin’s flexible approach to the basic rhythmic pulse set off his critics, like Meyerbeer, who complained that the beats conformed more to the waltz – see the middle section of the C Major, Op. 33, No. 3 – than to the national dance, but Chopin resisted and often dismissed their critiques. Chopin invented rather than copied the forms he notated, and so he remains less an ethnographer than an original.  Since Chopin freely utilized his opera in the form as he saw fit, Pavel Kolesnikov (rec. 22-24 August 2015) follows suit and selects mazurkas freely from among the collections published 1826-1845. We have, then, a compressed survey of the Chopin style in the form as it evolves from Chopin’s early chromatic harmony to intricately sophisticated studies in polyphony and cross-rhythm. Chopin composed mazurkas essentially throughout his entire career, a lyrically national life’s […]