Frédéric Chopin

Piano works

Alexei Volodin

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917235425

Catalog number: CC 72354
Releasedate: 26-02-10

Volodin's goal in life is to be a good pianist!
Volodin is modest and his art is not to play like a showman, but to be inspired and to get this across to the audience
An internationally well-known pianist who played all over the world
He has won several prizes at different international competitions. In 2003 he won the First Prize at the ninth edition of the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich, award that launched his international career
He studied and did masterclasses with: I. Chaklina, T. Zelikman, Professor Elisso Virsaladze.
In 2001/02 he studied at the Theo Lieven International Piano Foundation in Como

Alexei Volodin is a modest musician, enormously talented but absolutely no 'showman', because that has nothing to do with art, according to himself. When he reads or hears that he has played a piece perfectly he disagrees. He is not like a perfect machine or computer. A human being does not play perfectly and is not supposed to. Rather a human being is inspired, that is a far better word for his interpretations, also on this Chopin-cd. A magnificent recording of a internationally well-known pianist!

Chopin is seen as one of the great composers, although his oeuvre is for the most part comprised of music for piano, solo or music that has a piano in it.

Daniel Barenboim once said, "Like a concave mirror Chopins music combines and condenses aristocratic and individual personality, fantasy and awareness of form, Nationalidiom and abstraction of consummate art, whose value most be measured not by its dimension, but by its concentration. Chopins music combines, often in a small space, an almost unparalleled richness of harmony and melody, a beautiful blend of romantic expression and classical severity."

The works recorded here demonstrate that characterization admirably.

Impromptu no. 1 A flat major op. 29