CD: Frédéric Chopin, Basel Academy of Music

In Chopin Late piano works Edoardo Torbianelli matches once again the poetry of his pianism with the rigour of his scholarly investigations into the music he plays. Together with the booklet essaywriter, Jeanne Roudet, Torbianelli has considered afresh the music written by Frédéric Chopin in the last fifteen years of the Polish composer’s life. To follow on from his Pian e forte collection, Torbianelli has recorded at Fondation Royaumont in France – playing on an 1842 Ignace Pleyel grand piano – Chopin’s A flat Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op 61, the B minor Sonata Op. 58 and a selection of Mazurkas and Nocturnes for this new Schola Cantorum Basiliensis release presented by Glossa.

With this programme Edoardo Torbianelli is situating the compositional approach more directly within Chopin’s Polish heritage; though he later went into exile the composer was present in Warsaw until just before the November Uprising in 1830. Unlike Berlioz and Liszt, it is argued, Chopin eschewed literature as direct inspiration and – again unlike Liszt – the Polish composer’s piano music shares similarities in technique and performative style with the bel canto school of singing, the descendant of the art of eighteenth-century castrati and perpetuated in the 1800s by Italian singers as heard by Chopin himself in Paris. The resulting “vocality” of Chopin’s piano music finds echo in Edoardo Torbianelli’s interpretations for a recording which can be considered both for its fresh approach but also as a masterly reflection of the composer’s genius.

01 Prélude in C sharp minor, op. 45
02 Mazurka in C sharp minor, op. 50/3
03 Nocturne in B major, op. 62/1
04 Nocturne in E major, op. 62/2
05 Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat major, op. 61
06 Mazurka in A flat major, op. 50/2
07 Barcarolle in F sharp major, op. 60
08 Mazurka in F sharp minor, op. 59/3

Sonate in B minor, op. 58
09 Allegro maestoso
10 Scherzo: Molto vivace
11 Largo
12 Finale: Presto non tanto

13 Mazurka in G major, op. 67/1

@Glossa