Louis Lortie - Louis Lortie plays Chopin, Vol. 5 (2017)

Louis Lorties Chopin series is achieving landmark status, as confirmed by the increasingly enthusiastic reviews of progressive volumes. This fifth one sumptuously highlights the Polish influences in Chopins music, offering gems from among the mazurkas and polonaises. Relatively brief in duration and simple in structure, the mazurkas reveal other aspect of Chopins music: quirky melodies, strangely chromatic harmonies, oddly accented rhythms, irregular phrase lengths, and wildly contrasting keyboard textures. They represent a fascinating part of Chopins output, for audiences and pianists alike. The vigour of the polonaises featured here, including the first two to be published, confirms Chopin as a radical, yet idiomatic transformer of the genre. The Allegro de concert, which Chopin was said to have kept for his projected return to a free Warsaw, is another link to his beloved country.