Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2

Frédéric Chopin

Krystian Zimerman, Polish Festival Orchestra (Krystian Zimerman, cond.)

album cover

The Piano Concerto as Improvisational Platform

These strange and unorthodox works were begun in 1829, when Frédéric Chopin was nineteen. He was still living in Poland, hadn't yet ventured to seek his fortune in Paris, and was apparently not interested in following established concerto form. The result is appealing youthful wildness. The orchestra and piano take turns stating the themes, and they rarely work together. The pianistic episodes bubble with the grand (improvised-sounding) harmonic schemes that made Chopin's piano music so revelatory.

Only the fussiest scholar listens to the cresting explorations of the first movement of Concerto No. 1 and faults their lack of structure. The rest of us hear Chopin's inventions as genius, deftly sketched melodies sent through unexpected chordal slaloms. These sound logical even as they veer off for brief detours into other tonal centers. Writing in 1850, the pianist and composer Franz Liszt appreciated Chopin's music this way: "His inspirations were powerful, fantastic, impulsive; his forms could be naught but free."

This recording, by the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, captures that aspect of Chopin. It's a labor of love. Though he'd recorded both pieces in his youth (at roughly the same age Chopin was when he composed them), the pianist and conductor took a more obsessive approach in 1999. He assembled his own orchestra, one willing to rehearse extensively without union overtime concerns interfering with the creative atmosphere. Once he had the pieces tweaked to his liking, Zimerman then took the group on a world tour.

The obsessiveness paid off: These are frequently astounding interpretations, blessed with subtle touches, like the halting hairsbreadth pauses in Concerto No. 1's second movement. Conducting from the piano, Zimerman puts his group, and his listeners, in touch with the impetuousness of Chopin, and shows how the composer's impulsive initial phrase can blossom into a purposeful, extensively elaborated motif. Zimerman plays freely, as though singing some epic, never-repeated melody, treating it as though it's something Chopin improvised on the fly.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1999, Deutsche Grammophon
Key Tracks: All of them
Another Interpretation: Martha Argerich: Chopin Panorama
Catalog Choice: The Complete Nocturnes and Impromptus, Claudio Arrau
Next Stop: Leoš Janáček: Piano Works
Book Pages: 167–168