All this week on Classic Drive, Lorcan will feature music from Marina Arsenijevic's Chopin Obsession.
Marina Arsenijevic was inspired to lovingly assemble her favorite Chopin compositions which included 14 Waltzes along with Fantasie-Impromptu and Ballade G Minor No.1 into an album titled "Chopin OBSESSION".
Marina's life story comes from the turbulence of war in former Yugoslavia/Serbia and has given her a special insight into Chopin’s musical "cry" for national identity while living and composing in Paris away from his native land of Poland, troubled by Russian aggression. Marina’s war time experiences of national disintegration has given her an unique perspective on Chopin’s work and enabled her to understand the full range of emotional nuances expressed in Chopin’s music from loneliness to melancholy to a bold expression to fight for right. It would be very hard for any pianist to fully express Chopin’s music without the insights of desperation that a life and death conflict imparts on the observer. Rather than putting the technical nature of Chopin’s compositions in the forefront, Marina has molded every piece to reveal its underlying emotional story using her nuanced virtuosity as needed to fully expose the genius of Chopin to the listener.
Chopin composed his waltzes between 1829 and 1847. Opuses 18, 34, 42 and 64 were published while he was alive, while the others were only to appear posthumously. Whether slow and meditative like Op. 34, No. 2 and Op. 69, No. 2, or fast and brilliant as Grande Valse Brillante Op. 18 and his Valses Brillantes Op. 34, each waltz is characterized by a lush harmonic flow and highly inventive turns, this despite the simple triple time that drives it forward.
Most of these pœtic miniatures are dedicated to the aristocratic women who surrounded Chopin: baronesses and countesses, faithful amateurs. He composed Waltz Opus 70, No. 3 as a tribute to Constance Gladowska, his first love in Warsaw, and Op. 69, No. 1, also called 'The Farewell Waltz', for his fiancée Marie Wodzinska. Chopin's writing for piano would not be quite the same without his spirited fantasy and refined sense of ornamentation.
However, probably the most famous waltzes are the Minute Waltz in D-flat Major and the Waltz in C-sharp Minor of 1847, two of the last set of waltzes Chopin published before his death (Op. 64).
The Fantaisie-Impromptu was written in 1834 and as most of the waltzes was not published while Chopin was alive. It was published posthumously in 1855 despite Chopin's instruction that none of his unpublished manuscripts be published.
Tune in at 5:20 everyday this week to hear a selection from this album on Lorcan Murray's Classic Drive.