Search - Chopin, Fou Ts'Ong :: Nocturnes

Incomparable Chopin

Peter Charleton | Dublin 6, Ireland. | 11/28/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are many styles of playing Chopin.Here is an artist who ignores them all.Fou Ts'ong studied with Jan Ekier in the Warsaw Conservatoire.The point of his teaching was that in the score were revealed the secrets to what a piece was.Ekier insisted that all his students sat down with facsimilies and asked themselves the question:if there were no tradition about this passage what would the music tell us as to how it should go?Here many years later through the hands of a pianist whom the insiders acknowledge as one of the greats is the result.It is incomparable.Charachterised by fast tempi,clarity of sound and texture and a mastery of the essence of Chopin,Fou Ts'ong gives us many suprises.He is never ungramatical and on repeated hearings one realises how a different approach from tradition may represent what Chopin wanted.Then you turn to the score and what the pianist is doing is juitified by what Chopin wrote.Why did no one see it before?Because of the multiple grimy layers of one pianist copying another that up to now have hidden the brilliant colours of those musical canvasses from us.One final word-the sound.Include for example the D flat Nocturne in any compilation of great singers and you will see that the origin of the soaring soprano lines of those pieces in the operas that Chopin loved but never wrote requires a mastery of the art of bel canto that a few pianists have.Here is one of them."

Excellent reading by a fine but forgotten Chopinist.

Samuel Wai | Moorhead, Minnesota USA | 12/06/1998

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Fou Ts'ong has been a excellent interpretor of the music of Chopin for over 40 years. I first heard him when I was a young child growing up in Hong Kong. A Warsaw Conservatory trained musician, Fou Ts'ong was originally from Shanghai. He came from an aristocratic family of old China. After winning many awards in the 50's, Fou Ts'ong settled in London. For a time, he was married to Yehudi Menuhin's daughter, also a musician. Mr. Fou (he prefers to place his surmane first, in the Chinese manner and often dresses in traditional Chinese clothes) in still active and operates out of London. This reissue of a 1978 recording contains many gems. The tempi are generally a little bit faster than many Nocturnes sets on the market. It is a very stylish and sensitive treatment. Full rubati were used in many places, controlled but brilliantly expressive. It should be regarded as one of the finest of the available recordings of the Nocturnes. The hi-fi quality is not the best but very acceptable. It is a fine budget price recording showcasing a very fine but somewhat forgotten Chinese pianist."

Soft and Delicate

Joe Anthony (a.k.a. JAG 1) | Massachusetts, USA | 09/23/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Utterly soothing; each of these "nocturnes" creates an atmosphere that is reflective and meditative. With just an element of Polish and French flavor, it is a curiously feminine type of music-very soft and delicate-so to speak. The pianist does an excellent job of framing this atmosphere.



Probably, Chopin's best work, and without a doubt, some of the best music composed for piano bar none.



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