Customer Reviews

Images of a Homeland

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A fabulous CD -- beautifully played, very informative liner notes. Please read each note as the piece is being played -- it will make it totally enjoyable, knowing what Chopin had in mind. The playing is sensitive and you are totally immersed in Chopin's longing for his homeland Poland.

Lots of pianists play Chopin - so it takes special qualities to make one set of performances stand out. Marjan Kiepura combines the necessary elements - mastery of rubato, agogics, dynamics, and tone color - to convey a palpable sense of Chopin's style. Added to the feeling of authenticity is sonething even more important - a real feeling of freshness and spontaneity. One hesitates to use the term "great" too freely, especially with an artist so recently encountered. But there is a performance magic at work here that compels attantion from start to finish. Bravo!

Marjan Kiepura plays 14 Mazurkas and six other 'warhorses'. The more well-known pieces are well played and cannot be criticized, but in these works the choices are nearly endless and the competition redoubtable. Thus four stars and not five.
In the Mazurkas Kiepura brings a light elegant attractive touch: these are certainly among the least neurotic performances of this complex unsettling music on CD. Because of Mr. Kiepura's basically happy ambience this CD is a pleasure to listen to more than once - a trait some more distinquished performances do not share. This would be a nice CD to give to someone whose favorite pieces by Chopin are the waltzes.
I did not care for the linear notes which are too much along the lines of fifties musical appreciation. I did like the eye-popping colors of the Polish artist whose harvest paintings enliven the inside of the CD case and the booklet.
The piano is recorded quite well without the reverberation that's so annoying in the older recording of all the Mazurkas played by Wasowski.