An album of relevant historical transcendence!
Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 12/07/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"These Chopin's studies were my first ones I heard in my early youth when I just was a teenager in 1974. Additionally, this was the third volume of this notable artist. The LP format was beautifully impressive due it presented Chopin's grave at the famous cemetery Pierre Lachisse in Paris. I was really impressed about the pristine elegance, majestic dignity, formidable fingering and sheer subtlety which was recorded.
But my surprise was majuscule when I was checking the new CD of Badura-Skoda in Amazon the past October 15th, re-released by Music & Arts label. To watch it was to acquire it. And so did I.
Last Friday night, I had the huge pleasure to listen it carefully. And I could realize my emotion by then was plainly justified. The sumptuous lyricism, Dionysian vitality Badura-Skoda tinged these pages made me ask myself why this recording had not exhumed a decade before at least.
Badura-Skoda is the last survivor of an extinguished tradition that comes from the late years of the XIX century, embodied by Kempff and Fischer his famous teacher. He plays with superb conviction, variegated imagination, ornamenting the arpeggios and octaves with accurate balance between introspection and expressiveness, remarking the central melody without restraining the accompaniment with the left hand without sentimentality but with sentiment. Specially remarkable are the No.1,3,5,6,7, 8 11 and 12 from the Op. 10. But in what concerns the Op. 25 there's no minor track. Special mention goes for the Ninth "Butterfly wings" played with interludes of volcanic outburst and meditative intimacy.
The CD has a special bonus. The mazurkas Op. 59, Nos. 1, 2 and 3 from a recital in Fresno on October, 13 1999.
It useless to beg you not let it pass this extraordinary historical register, because far beyond of my own experience, this album gives the unexplored facets of this legendary interpreter. One of the twelve pianists of the last Century (29 by then) playing one of the most important pages of the romantic repertoire of the beloved Polish composer.
Don't think it twice and go for it. Not only to enrich your personal collection but regarded as a special gift someone you love in these Christmas or the rest of the year.
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