Chopin: Complete Waltzes

Alice Sara Ott (Artist), Frederic Francois Chopin (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Frederic Francois Chopin
• Audio CD (January 26, 2010)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B002WHTGC2
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,616 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From the Artist

"I've always been fascinated by Chopin's waltzes. He composed them all through his life, from early youth until shortly before his death. His whole life and his personality are reflected in the waltzes...They say that home isn't a place but a feeling. I can identify with how torn Chopin felt, because I also grew up and live between two cultures. Neither in Germany nor in Japan do I have a proper homeland. In both countries I'm regarded as a foreigner. For me, too, music is the only place where I really feel at home."--Alice Sara Ott

Product Description

Already a star in Japan, piano-wonder (Hamburger Abendblatt) Alice Sara Ott introduces herself to the entire world of music with her International Deutsche Grammophon debut album--the complete Chopin Waltzes. Ott, though barely out of her teens, continually impresses critics and audiences alike with her recitals throughout Europe and Japan. She will make her US orchestral debut in Cincinnati with the Liszt Piano Concerto no. 1. The young pianist is surely a rising star to watch, and this recital of Chopin gems is the perfect introduction to her artistry.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Odd Chopin from Ott, June 11, 2010

By 

Hank Drake (Cleveland, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Chopin: Complete Waltzes (Audio CD)

I write this review knowing I'll get many "unhelpful" votes, and at the risk of coming off like a grumpy old man. But, here goes.

What the heck has happened to Deutsche Grammophon? There was a time when DG was considered the sui generis of Classical labels, with an artist roster than ran the gamut from Bernstein to Karajan and Horowitz to Pollini. Now, their fortunes have sunk to the degree that even Lang Lang (after forcing Yundi Li from the label) has jumped ship for the crossover label, Sony.

I'd never heard of Alice Sara Ott before encountering this recording, despite my keen interest in piano performance. Her sole claim to fame is winning First Prize at a very minor piano competition in 2004. Her technique is serviceable to the extent that she can play the notes evenly, and control a crescendo or diminuendo with reasonable accuracy.

In the "Golden Age", one could easily tell a pianist by his/her individual sound and approach to the music. By the latter half of the 20th Century, that was less & less the case, as the purist approach and interpretive anonymity became fetishized. Now, the pendulum has swung back - and how. There is a growing trend in Classical music performance and Ms. Ott is part of it: with the endless duplication of recorded repertoire, musicians are becoming desperate to distinguish themselves from their peers. It seems musicians are offering increasingly bizarre interpretations not for personal expression, but to be different for the sake of being different.

Take, for example, Ms. Ott's performance of the Waltz in A-flat, Op. 42 (the so-called "Two-Four" waltz): the charm of this piece rests on the conflict between the melody, which is shaped as if it were in 2/4 time, and the accompaniment, which is clearly in ľ time (the actual notation of the waltz is in ľ time, of course). If this waltz were an opera aria, it would depict a husband and wife bickering with each other. Ott throws rubato all over the place and constantly changes tempo, so that the point of the piece is lost. Ott fusses with the music far more than, say, Rachmaninoff would have, and in a totally inorganic way which is poles apart from the inner-logic of the late-Romantic generation.

Clearly, Ms. Ott understands neither Chopin nor Romantic performance practice. Believe it or not, there were rules during the Romantic era. One such rule was to always begin a piece in a direct manner, so that rubato and other expressive devices would be effective when employed later in the work. In other words, rubato is an effect, not a constant.

DG's recorded sound is nothing to write home about, either. It manages to be both glaring and distant at the same time. I suspect the piano was recorded close up with artificial reverb laid on thick in post-production, and the high frequencies sound attenuated.

Recommended complete set:
Chopin: Complete Waltzes Ohlsson

Recommended sets without juvenilia:
Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 29 Rubinstein's Mono set
Chopin: Waltzes; Impromptus Rubinstein's Stereo set
Waltzes Lipatti - mono

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Chopin Waltzes as Wonderland, where Miss Alice gets Very Lost, April 6, 2010

By 

C. Pontus T. (SE/Asia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chopin: Complete Waltzes (Audio CD)

Alice Sara Ott is the most recent recruit in the DG pool of potential new pianist stars. The DG website focuses on all the various competitions she has won, since seven years of age. Against this background, one would presume she is an accomplished technician--and judging from her Liszt Etudes (her debut album of nearly a year ago, although Amazon's release date strangely has yet to occur) and La Campanella (readily available on YouTube), her technique is certainly secure enough already.

Nonetheless, in Chopin's Waltzes, technical prowess does not help much to crack these refined Viennese-Parisian nuts. Still, this is more or less solely what Ott falls back on, combined with the most freely applied rubato conceivable--well, freely here meaning erratically: There is simply no way to anticipate Ott's tempo manipulations (often amounting to a handful per phrase) as they do not stem organically from the musical flow but rather her own will. Therefore, these ears find it very hard to follow Ott's Waltzes, which are neither dancing nor singing but very much fumbling.

To sum up, it would not be unfair to say that the Chopin Waltzes make up something of a Wonderland to young Alice, where she gets very lost over the course of the 57 minutes she spends trying to make sense of Chopin's elusive 3/4 landscape. My prediction is that Miss Ott will need to stick to more outwardly virtuosic repertoire in order to keep her desirable recording contract; her musical palette has yet to mature for Chopin.

REFERENCES: Ohlsson, Ashkenazy

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars poetic chopin excellently played and recorded, January 26, 2010

By 

Ivor E. Zetler (Sydney Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chopin: Complete Waltzes (Audio CD)

Alice Sara Ott was born in Munich in 1988 and is said to have a strong following in Europe and Japan. In this recital she plays all the 19 Chopin waltzes; this includes some youthful works that are of minor interest. I am pleased to report that Ms Ott gives excellent renditions of these compositions. Her technique and phrasing are immaculate and her playing is thoughtful, poetic and truthful to the spirit of the music. She additionally brings an appropriate brio to the waltzes when required. This version has the advantage of having a warm, detailed and exceptionally realistic recorded sound.

There have been two other recent issues of the Chopin Waltzes; I found that the Stephen Bishop Kovacevic performance failed to hold my interest and snippets of the Fliter/EMI that I have heard revealed inferior sound compared with Ott's. Going back to the venerable Lipatti and Rubinstein versions one encounters a world of natural, idiomatic elegance that seems to elude modern pianists. Nevertheless, I can recommend Alice Sara Ott's new DG issue for those seeking a modern reading of the waltzes and await her further recordings with interest.