Description
Hungaroton: Gábor Farkas — Chopin: Ballades & Impromptus — Audio CD
Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!
Product Details:
- Product Type: Audio CD
- Brand / Label: Hungaroton
- Composer: Frédéric Chopin
- Artist: Gábor Farkas (piano)
- Release Year: 2019
- Catalog Number: HCD 32829
- UPC: 5991813282927
- Genre: Classical
- Style: Romantic, Solo Piano
Product Features
- Format: CD
- Discs: 1
- Tracks: 8
- Total runtime: 57:35
- Made in: EU
- Condition: Brand New, Factory Sealed
Overview
Two of Chopin's most personal forms, gathered on one disc. The piano ballade was his invention — arguably the purest expression of the Romantic aesthetic, four large works each telling its tale through a completely different formal design. Hungarian pianist Gábor Farkas plays all four alongside a generous group of the impromptus.
The four Ballades come from the height of Chopin's career, and no two are built the same way. The G-minor opens the disc with its famous narrative sweep; the F-major, A-flat and the great F-minor each carve their own path. Farkas gives them room to breathe without losing the architecture.
The impromptus are the looser counterpart — "in promptu," seemingly genre-less piano pieces, longer than the nocturnes but shorter than the ballades. George Sand once claimed Chopin's finished compositions were only pale shadows of his improvisations; these pieces come closest to that spontaneity, including the beloved Fantaisie-Impromptu that closes the program.
This is the sealed 2019 Hungaroton edition — a well-recorded recital of Chopin's poetry from one of Hungary's leading concert pianists.
Interesting Facts
- Chopin essentially invented the piano ballade as a concert genre; no composer before him had used the term this way for solo piano.
- The four Ballades are each cast in a distinct, unconventional form — part of what makes them so admired by performers and scholars.
- The Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66, was published only after Chopin's death, against his own wishes, and became one of his most popular works.
- George Sand, Chopin's companion for years, wrote that his compositions were "but pale shadows of his improvisations."
- Gábor Farkas is a prize-winning Hungarian pianist and pedagogue, internationally active as a Chopin and Liszt interpreter.
- The album pairs all four mature Ballades with four impromptus, surveying two of Chopin's most characteristic genres in one program.
Track Listing
- Ballade in G minor, Op. 23 — 9:07
- Ballade in F major, Op. 38 — 7:28
- Ballade in A-flat major, Op. 47 — 7:41
- Ballade in F minor, Op. 52 — 11:36
- Impromptu in A-flat major, Op. 29 — 3:57
- Impromptu in F-sharp minor, Op. 36 — 5:53
- Impromptu in G-flat major, Op. 51 — 6:07
- Impromptu in C-sharp minor (Fantaisie-Impromptu), Op. 66 — 5:28
Publishers
Released by Hungaroton in 2019, catalog HCD 32829; distributed by Fotexnet Kft., Budapest. Made in the EU.
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