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Track(s) taken from CDS44351/66

Mazurka in C sharp minor, Op 41 No 4

composer
1839; published by Breitkopf & Härtel as Op 41 No 1; Mazurka No 26; dedicated to Stefan Witwicki

Garrick Ohlsson (piano)
Recording details: January 1998
Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, State University of New York, USA
Produced by Adam Abeshouse
Engineered by Adam Abeshouse
Release date: November 2008
Total duration: 3 minutes 15 seconds

Cover artwork: Frédéric Chopin in concert at the Hotel Lambert, Paris (1840). Antar Teofil Kwiatowski (1809-1891)
Bibliothèque Polonaise, Paris / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Images
 

Other recordings available for download

Pavel Kolesnikov (piano)

Reviews

‘Hyperion's big deal … Ohlsson is a powerful and committed player, and is afforded very good sound by the engineers … this is almost certainly how these pieces were played in Chopin's time’ (The Mail on Sunday)

‘This is an oustanding achievement, which any genuine Chopin lover and student of Romantic music should own … a landmark in the recording of Chopin's music … Garrick Ohlsson and Hyperion deserve the greatest success in bringing this important undertaking to such a consistently impressive conclusion’ (International Record Review)

‘An attractively priced box set … Ohlsson is in a class of his own’ (Pianist)

‘The collaborative works receive particularly rewarding performances … Ohlsson arguably offers more consistent artistry than Biret, Ashkenazy, Magaloff, and Harasiewicz’ (Classics Today)

‘Garrick Ohlsson’s complete survey of everything Chopin wrote for piano (including chamber music, songs, and for piano and orchestra) will delight the completist and the Chopin connoisseur. Ohlsson (who won the Chopin International Piano Competition in 1970) gives us accounts of this wondrous repertoire in weighty and commanding style, aristocratic and impulsive (but not lacking light and shade or contemplative contrasts) and, at times, very sensitive and searching. These vivid recordings were made in the second half of the 1990s and have previously appeared on the Arabesque label. They now sit very well in Hyperion’s catalogue’ (Classical Source)
The Mazurka, Op 41 No 4, also in C sharp minor (a key that elicited some of Chopin’s most innovative efforts in the genre), packs each section with multiple themes (in the opening section, drawing on an inherent ambiguity of triple metre, he shifts from a theme that sounds unstably like a mazurka to one that sounds ebulliently like a waltz). Most notable is its extended coda, where the opening, unstable ‘mazurka’ tune finally thunders out in stable form, but in a way that sounds tragic rather than triumphant.

from notes by Jeffrey Kallberg © 2019

Dans la Mazurka, op.41 n° 4, également en ut dièse mineur (tonalité qui suscita certaines des réalisations les plus novatrices de Chopin dans le genre), chaque section est remplie de multiples thèmes (dans la section initiale, en jouant sur l’ambiguïté inhérente au rythme ternaire, il passe d’un thème de mazurka d’apparence instable à un autre thème qui semble aussi exubérant qu’une valse). Le plus remarquable, c’est la très longue coda, où l’air initial de «mazurka» instable tonne sous une forme stable, mais d’une manière plus tragique que triomphale.

extrait des notes rédigées par Jeffrey Kallberg © 2019
Français: Marie-Stella Pâris

Die Mazurka, op. 41 Nr. 4, ebenfalls in cis-Moll (eine Tonart, die Chopin zu besonders innovativen Schöpfungen in diesem Genre inspirierte), hat in jedem Abschnitt mehrere Themen (zu Beginn greift er auf die dem Dreiertakt inhärente Mehrdeutigkeit zurück und wechselt von einem Thema, das nicht ganz zuverlässig wie eine Mazurka klingt, zu einem, das übersprudelnd wie ein Walzer wirkt). Am bemerkenswertesten ist die ausgedehnte Coda, wo die unbeständige „Mazurka-Melodie“ schließlich völlig stabil herausdonnert, jedoch in einer Art und Weise, die eher tragisch denn triumphierend anmutet.

aus dem Begleittext von Jeffrey Kallberg © 2019
Deutsch: Viola Scheffel

Other albums featuring this work

Chopin: Impromptus, waltzes & mazurkas
Studio Master: CDA68273Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Chopin: The Complete Mazurkas, Vol. 1
CDH55391 Piano albums for £8.00
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