Chopin - Polonaise Fantaisie [Op. 61] скачать в хорошем качестве

Chopin - Polonaise Fantaisie [Op. 61]

Performed by: Arthur Rubinstein. The Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61, is a composition for piano by Frédéric Chopin. It was dedicated to Mme A. Veyret, written and published in 1846. From a structural point of view, the Polonaise-Fantaisie remains Chopin's most complex work, unfettered by traditional models. The composition did not come easily to Chopin. There are more sketches for this piece than for any other that he wrote for solo piano. These working drafts, eight pages altogether show that the Polonaise-Fantaisie went through several stages before reaching it's final form. The Polish writer and painter Feliks Jabłczyński went so far as to say: "Neither the Eroica nor the Appassionata of Beethoven has a single section of such raging passion." While there is much hyper-bole in those words, we have to admit that Chopin rarely surpassed the heights of emotion reached in these culminating pages. Completed in the summer of 1846, the work could well be regarded as a valedictory utterance made in the face of an encroaching illness that was bringing his career to a standstill. True, the incomparable Barcarolle, op. 60, and the last Two Nocturnes, op. 62, were still in Chopin's portfolio awaiting their final form. But they did not involve him in such labor the Polonaise-Fantaisie. This work was slow to gain favour with musicians, due to its harmonic complexity and intricate form. Arthur Hedley was one of the first critics to speak positively of the work, writing in 1947 that it "works on the hearer's imagination with a power of suggestion equaled only by the F minor Fantasy or the fourth Ballade", although Arthur Rubinstein, Leff Pouishnoff, Claudio Arrau and Vladimir Horowitz had been including it in their programs some decades earlier.