Chopin - Etudes, op.25, 4 Scherzi
£15.15
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Label: Warner
Cat No: 9029676424
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Instrumental
Release Date: 24th September 2021
Contents
Artists
Beatrice Rana (piano)About
Sound/Video
Paused
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112 Etudes op.25 - no.1 in A flat major 'Aeolian Harp'
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212 Etudes op.25 - no.2 in F minor
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312 Etudes op.25 - no.3 in F major
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412 Etudes op.25 - no.4 in A minor
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512 Etudes op.25 - no.5 in E minor
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612 Etudes op.25 - no.6 in G sharp minor
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712 Etudes op.25 - no.7 in C sharp minor
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812 Etudes op.25 - no.8 in D flat major
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912 Etudes op.25 - no.9 in G flat major
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1012 Etudes op.25 - no.10 in B minor
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1112 Etudes op.25 - no.11 in A minor 'Winter Wind'
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1212 Etudes op.25 - no.12 in C minor
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13Scherzo no.1 in B minor, op.20
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14Scherzo no.2 in B flat minor, op.31
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15Scherzo no.3 in C sharp minor, op.39
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16Scherzo no.4 in E major, op.54
Europadisc Review
The Études were set down in Berlin in February 2020, just before the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic took hold of Europe. The Op.25 set is normally paired with its more popular Op.10 predecessors, but by focussing on the later works Rana focuses our attention on some of Chopin’s most demanding and absorbing ‘miniatures’. Although she came relatively late to Chopin (her teacher, Benedetto Lupo, wouldn’t introduce her to his music until her mid-teens), she has all the power, finesse and variety of touch needed for this musically and technically demanding repertoire. She also has a finely-tuned sense of underlying pulse – essential in music where the highly-variegated surface demands a higher-level control of long-term rhythm and phrasing.
Rana views the Op.25 set as an organic whole, and the last three studies in particular (all in minor keys) as constituting a trilogy. In no.10 she is completely in control of the tumbling, diabolical cascades of the B minor outer sections, but yields to the beauties of the central B major episode. After the unadorned and harmonised statements of the main theme in its opening four-bar Lento, Rana throws herself into the tempestuous main Allegro con brio of the A minor ‘Western Wind’ study, with closing bars whose weighty ferocity could summon the dead. That edge-of-seat wildness spills over thrillingly into the concluding C minor study, sometimes referred to as the 'Ocean' etude – an apt description for Rana’s toweringly elemental performance here.
The four Scherzi span Chopin’s ‘early’, ‘middle’ and ‘late’ periods (if one can append such labels to a life cut short so prematurely), and Rana clearly relishes the virtuosic challenges of the First Scherzo (in B minor, 1833) as much as she does the intense volatility and anguish of the Second and Third (the B flat minor of 1837 and C sharp minor of 1838-39) and the classical refinement of the Fourth (in E major, 1842-43). On these larger canvases, the power and variety of her playing is even more apparent, as well as her control of the music’s long-term trajectory. And it’s also possible to detect an extra level of expressive depth, perhaps the consequence (as Rana herself notes) of studying and recording these works in February 2021 amid all the uncertainties of lockdown.
The central section of the First Scherzo is achingly beautiful, while the transition back to the virtuosity of the main theme is brilliantly judged. The mercurial mood changes of the Second are handled with extraordinary assurance, the focus of her attack in the B flat minor main subject as remarkable as the seemingly infinite variety of colour, and the layers of finesse and depth she finds, in the softer-hued major-key passages. One could argue that the volatility of this and the Third Scherzo are best suited to Rana’s pianistic temperament, were it not for the fact that she turns in an account of the Fourth whose sense of balance, wholeness, radiance and charm place it on a level every bit as exalted as the rest of this outstanding album. Let us hope that we don’t have to wait another decade for Beatrice Rana’s next Chopin album!
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