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Thursday, March 17, 2016

Alexei Tartakovsky plays Chopin

If you are a young fantastic pianist doing Chopin's finest potboilers, be remarkable or you might as well go home. Alexei Tartakovsky is just that on Plays Chopin (self-released) in a live concert recording from Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall, 2015.

Fantastic and remarkable...I do not use those words often, especially as it applies to Chopin. So that translates into a huge amount of respect and awe for this Semi-Finalist of the 2015 Chopin International Competition and winner of several others.

We hear him in sterling form playing the "Ballade, op. 23," the "Polonaise-Fantasy, op. 61," the "Polonaise, op. 53," several "Nocturnes," and the "Sonata in B-Flat minor, op. 35."

There is a tremendous passion and kinetic energy unleashed in these performances, something you might expect from a first-ranking virtuoso of our time, doing justice to the high demands of classic Chopin. But with all that you get a supremely musical reading, all the right notes, yes, but with a personal spin that puts Tartakovsky squarely into the music as someone who has drilled deeply to the core of each piece, each movement, and found himself within.

Listen to his way with the funeral movement of the Sonata for what I mean. It sounds new, for as many times as one has heard it. It sings, it suspends time, it carries us into a special world.

So needless to say I recommend you hear what a bright star in the new generational firmament can do with music you have heard so many times.

And if it so happens that you will be in New York City on the evening of this March 31st, he is giving a recital at Merkin Concert Hall, at 7:30. Click on the following link for more info, tickets, etc. http://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/alexei-tartakovski-piano/

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