Chopin: Life According to Chopin (CD review)

Chopin’s Greatest Piano Solos. Jeffrey Biegel, piano. GPR Records GPR10014.

Every artist appears to love some composer more than others. American pianist, composer, arranger, teacher, and Steinway artist Jeffrey Biegel seems to love Chopin. In this album, he seems absolutely to adore Chopin. According to the album title, he must live Chopin. Not that he can’t play other music just as well, as his many previous recordings like the most-recent Bach on a Steinway (2010), A Steinway Christmas Album (2011), and A Grand Romance (2013) attest. It’s just that he looks as though he has a special affinity for Chopin and communicates an extra-special joy in communicating the man’s tunes. Thus, it’s a treat to find some of Mr. Biegel’s favorite Chopin in the 2014 release Life According to Chopin.

Interestingly, according to a booklet note, “Until the age of three, Mr. Biegel could neither hear nor speak until corrected by surgery. The ‘reverse Beethoven’ phenomenon can explain Mr. Biegel’s life in music, having heard only vibrations in his formative years.” What’s more, Mr. Biegel has filled his life with personal innovation. For instance, he “initiated the first live Internet recitals in New York and Amsterdam in 1997 and 1998, and, in 1999, assembled the largest consortium of orchestras (over 25) to celebrate the millennium with a new concerto composed for him.”

So, yes, Mr. Biegel is an artist of immense talent, boundless creativity, and high repute. It’s hard not to like his Chopin performances, even for someone like me who for years never thought he’d find anyone he’d like as well as the Chopin interpreters he grew up with: Rubinstein first, then Cliburn, Pollini, Ashkenazy, and others. Yet Biegel takes his place alongside them, doing Chopin proud.

Mr. Biegel begins the program with the Waltz in D-flat, Op. 64, No. 1, the “Minute” waltz that he says “every young pianist MUST play.” Well, he’s not a young pianist anymore, but I’m glad he played it. Even though you may have heard it a hundred times, Biegel makes it come alive, fresh and new, with his lilting manner and gentle phrasing. With him it’s not just another lickety-split, look at how masterly a pianist I am; it’s a surprisingly amiable, lyrical piece that soars. Like all of Biegel’s Chopin, it shows us an artist at the service of a composer’s music rather than an artist using a composer’s music merely to show off his virtuosity.

And so it goes through a dozen selections and over seventy minutes of music. Here, I couldn't help pick favorites among Biegel's favorites. The Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2, for example, is dazzling in both its technical showmanship and its graceful, rhapsodic beauty. The Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 ebbs and flows wonderfully from one tonal region to another. The Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2 is as light, sheer, and gossamer as any reading you'll find as Biegel plays it in this transcription by Theodor Leschitezky. I could go on, and as you can guess, I probably will. I love every track on this disc.

Biegel produces music with passion and soul, never distorting the notes but adding an intimate touch of joy and expressiveness to them. One listen to the Andante Spianato, Op. 22 gives you an idea of what I mean; it's conveys real inspiration and feeling in every phrase. It's delightful in its smooth, fluent motion and ever-changing line. Then, the familiar Fantasie-Impromptu No. 4 in C-sharp minor, Op. 66 ("I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" was the pop-song treatment) is never flashy but glides along rhythmically, effortlessly, stylishly, producing an uncanny sensation of improvisation with precision.

If you like Mr. Biegel's piano playing, if you like Chopin, heck, if you just like music, you cannot go wrong with this album. And it helps that it sounds so good.

Recorded at Patrych Sound Studios, New York, in 2013 by producer Joe Patrych, Biegel’s Chopin album sounds as good as anything he’s done. Like most good piano recordings, this one sounds rich,  warm, resonant, and very, very clean, with virtually no distortion, brightness, hardness, edginess, dryness, or anything else to distract one from the music. It's quite realistic, with its clear, solid transient impact and natural, lifelike acoustic setting.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here: