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Chopin is one of my favorite composers, as he is for many others. I highly recommend playing these preludes. It’s an experience unlike any other.
Each prelude represents an emotion. Stories tell us people would gather under Chopin’s hotel, drawn to the music. Depending on the prelude, they would say angels arrived from the heavens, or the Devil walked among them.
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A piano transcription of Bach’s Chaconne. A particularly brilliant section starts at 9:00.
Brahms wrote of the Chaconne, “The Chaconne is one of the most wonderful, incomprehensible pieces of music. On a single staff, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings. If I were to imagine how I might have made, conceived the piece, I know for certain that the overwhelming excitement and awe would have driven me mad”
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A masterwork considered to be among the most significant pieces of the early romantic period, Schumann considered the composition his most passionate piece. Schumann dedicated the work to Franz Liszt, one of the only pianists at the time capable of meeting its technical demands.
The first and most famous movement calls out to Schumann’s beloved Clara Wieck. Forbidden from contacting each other by her father, Schumann voices his anguish through the music. Certain phrases are said to be ciphers calling out her name, “Clara, Clara”!
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if string(beans) is not type("veggie") then yield fs.read("432khz dysti") or return false and end
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An achingly gorgeous set of etudes with lyricism that makes the technical difficulty fade into the background.
If you only have a few minutes please listen to Un Sospiro at 13:35
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A piano suite known for being amongst the most challenging pieces ever written for piano, Ravel based this composition on poems of the same name by Aloysius Bertrand. Ondine depicts a water nymph seducing her observer. Le Gibet depicts a man hanging in the gallows at sunset with church bells ringing in the background. Scarbo represents a demon being mischievous in his nighttime adventures.
Listen to the recording by Grosvenor.