Musica
Chopin, Scherzi - Pietro De Maria
This is a performance which reveals not only attention to the text and its precise indications, but also a perfect understanding of the various aspects of Chopin’s poetics, which find a rare consistency of form and character in four creations which share one rhythm but remain unique in their significance and their esthetic value.Chopin’s four Scherzi, as innumerable versions recorded over the years attest, have always been a trial ground for over-ambitious virtuosos, who put the lyrical moments and the narrative exigencies of these four masterpieces in the background. Pietro De Maria does not yield to this temptation, although it certainly would not be difficult for him to unbridle his superlative technical apparatus in the hundreds of dizzying measures of this music; his interpretation of the four pieces reveals a control of the velocity, always in the interest of the musical discourse, and a careful and very musical mix of the extremely varied dynamics, from the evanescent pianissimo to the powerful fortissimo. In his performance there is the will – and the sensitivity – to grasp the lyrical moment in the very fast flow of these passionate and swirling poems, accentuating also – perhaps even excessively – the sudden change in the velocity between the beginning and the conclusion of the pieces (always brilliant and tending inexorably forward) and the central parts, which Chopin conceived as a necessary contrast before the recapitulation and the conclusion.
This is a performance which reveals not only attention to the text and its precise indications, but also a perfect understanding of the various aspects of Chopin’s poetics, which find a rare consistency of form and character in four creations which share one rhythm but remain unique in their significance and their esthetic value.
On the other extreme from these virtuoso works, among the longest composed by Chopin, we find in this latest recording of De Maria’s complete works of Chopin, a series of short and shorter pieces – some almost entirely unknown and absent from nearly all concert programs – among these only the Tarantella op.43 was published by the composer. De Maria plays them with the same naturalness and discursive logic as the Scherzi, apart from the obvious differences of pianistic depth and technical difficulty, from the elegance of the Ecossaises, to the evocation of an improbable Bach in the Fugue in A minor, to the dance movements of the Tarantella, of the two Bourrées and of the Galop Marquis.
This is a performance which reveals not only attention to the text and its precise indications, but also a perfect understanding of the various aspects of Chopin’s poetics, which find a rare consistency of form and character in four creations which share one rhythm but remain unique in their significance and their esthetic value.Chopin’s four Scherzi, as innumerable versions recorded over the years attest, have always been a trial ground for over-ambitious virtuosos, who put the lyrical moments and the narrative exigencies of these four masterpieces in the background. Pietro De Maria does not yield to this temptation, although it certainly would not be difficult for him to unbridle his superlative technical apparatus in the hundreds of dizzying measures of this music; his interpretation of the four pieces reveals a control of the velocity, always in the interest of the musical discourse, and a careful and very musical mix of the extremely varied dynamics, from the evanescent pianissimo to the powerful fortissimo. In his performance there is the will – and the sensitivity – to grasp the lyrical moment in the very fast flow of these passionate and swirling poems, accentuating also – perhaps even excessively – the sudden change in the velocity between the beginning and the conclusion of the pieces (always brilliant and tending inexorably forward) and the central parts, which Chopin conceived as a necessary contrast before the recapitulation and the conclusion.
This is a performance which reveals not only attention to the text and its precise indications, but also a perfect understanding of the various aspects of Chopin’s poetics, which find a rare consistency of form and character in four creations which share one rhythm but remain unique in their significance and their esthetic value.
On the other extreme from these virtuoso works, among the longest composed by Chopin, we find in this latest recording of De Maria’s complete works of Chopin, a series of short and shorter pieces – some almost entirely unknown and absent from nearly all concert programs – among these only the Tarantella op.43 was published by the composer. De Maria plays them with the same naturalness and discursive logic as the Scherzi, apart from the obvious differences of pianistic depth and technical difficulty, from the elegance of the Ecossaises, to the evocation of an improbable Bach in the Fugue in A minor, to the dance movements of the Tarantella, of the two Bourrées and of the Galop Marquis.
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