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10/06/2024
“Chopin Voyage”
Frédéric Chopin: Two Nocturnes, opus 62 – Polonaise-Fantaisie, opus 61 – Barcarolle in F‑Sharp major, opus 60 – Sonata n° 3 in B minor, opus 58 – Three Mazurkas, opus 59
Yulianna Avdeeva (piano)
Recording: Tippet Rise Art Center, Fishtail, Montana (February 2024) – 70’ 49
Pentatone PTC 5187 233 (Distributed by Naxos of America) – Booklet in English
In 2010, Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva won 1st prize at the XVIth International Chopin Piano Competition. Avdeeva was the fourth woman to be awarded the title, after Martha Argerich in 1999 and dual winners Halina Czerny Stefanska and Bella Davidovich in 1949. Avdeeva has continued to be focused on Chopin’s music. But, as she explains in the liner notes to her recording “Chopin Voyage,” her approach to his music has changed since her prizewinning performance in Moscow, writing “I feel the strongest desire to document my journey with the music of Chopin,” adding “my perception of Chopin continues to be transformed the more I play his music.”
“Voyage” is Avdeeva’s stellar collection of Chopin’s late career works, showcasing his compositional range and innovative musicality. Avdeeva is among the GenX pianists who have recognized the non‑decorative architecture and lyrical synthesis Chopin created. Avdeeva plays this repertoire with commanding interpretive artistry, understated virtuosity and notation of Chopin’s prescient improvisational soundworld.
She wanted to be in such an environment to reassess her relationship with music of Chopin as she focused on his late career works: compositions that represent his mastery of classicist forms and his liberated approach to such forms. It is her engagement with the music and building audiences, as much as her virtuosity that comes across even in this studio recording. During the Covid‑19 Pandemic, for instance, she streamed weekly Bach concerts to stay connected to her audiences.
Chopin had been seriously ill for most of his adult life, suffering from complications from a rare tuberculosis. He died in 1849. For two decades, he was a concert superstar, and he was still touring staging salons and concerts throughout his final years. Adding to his celebrity was the steamy gossip over his affair with writer Aurore Dupin, whose pen name was George Sand. By his mid‑30s, due to his deteriorating health, he was unable to continue to keep up the demands of performing in public. Chopin retreated to a chalet to the outskirts of Paris surrounded by nature and far from the madding crowd.
Avdeeva’s playlist opens with two of Chopin’s hypnotic Nocturnes (opus 62) which Avdeeva cites as his way of “addressing eternity, with rare but very strong emotional outbursts.” that represent “the last period of his creative life.” The next track is the Polonaise-Fantaisie, Chopin’s last major work for solo piano and one of his most famous. Avdeeva leans into its steely, lyrical drama. Next is Chopin’s Barcarolle in F‑Sharp major a musical conjuring of a gondolier’s Venetian boat song and on this collection a most shimmering romantic interlude.
But the masterpiece on this album is her rendering of Chopin’s Sonata n° 3 with its neoclassical structures laced with the composer’s free expression. It is among his most defining pieces and highlights Avdeeva’s insights into its fusionist elements. “Voyage” concludes with the intoxicating Three Mazurkas that still make one want to dance to the music of Chopin’s time.
Avdeeva recorded this album in the secluded environs of the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana, against the rustic, majestic backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains. Perhaps an environ to channel Chopin’s own seclusion when he composed these works, Avdeeva illuminates the timeless relevance of Chopin’s canon that, indeed, keeps giving 175 years after it was composed. Adding to spectral mystique of these sessions is the fact that Avdeeva performs the music on legendary Chopin specialist Vladimir Horowitz’s personal Steinway CD‑18 (for Concert Department) Piano.
Lewis J. Whittington
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