Chopin Introduction and Polonaise Brillante

Thought I'd post this amusing clip from a rehearsal before a concert. Quite a few fudged bits; we were both very nervous. Thankfully the actually concert went okay but we didn't get a recording of that :-(, sods law.

Terrific! Really.

I love this piece and wish it were played more, don't understand why more cellists don't insist on it.
I didn't really know it till just 3 years ago, when I heard it in a couple of the Chopin 200 year celebrations, including one by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, and probably hundreds of times since then on a CD of the other of them. (I loved the piece and that performance so much that with permission of the performers I posted it on youtube).

You both do great. To me it's a fully professional performance, with a nice Chopin feel and a good polonaise lilt. There's one thing I would have preferred very slightly differently and of course this is just a matter of taste: I would have liked the polonaise part to be a touch slower, to allow for still a bit more of the polonaise lilt -- but even at that rapid tempo, you've got that. It's great that you did this piece and I'm very glad you posted it.

I do, it's bloody difficult haha. My cellist regretted it by the end ;-)

Thanks for your comments :-)

Darn right it is! You start feeling sorry for the cello at the end of the intro, when it tries to do what the piano did at the beginning.

(Sure, real good cellists can do it -- and your guy did!)


He needn't have.
And it'll be a great thing to keep in his repertoire forever. I hope he feels like it.

BTW, you too!

P.S. I hope that some more of our members might give a serious listen to this. It's an excellent performance of a fairly neglected piece of Chopin. Sure, it's not "the mature Chopin," including that I think we hear Chopin doing some imitation of Schubert (in the intro) and Mozart (the beginning of the polonaise) on his way to becoming himself, but it has very much to offer: beautiful Chopinesque melodies, a wonderful polonaise theme that is nicely developed, nice interplay between the cello and piano, and at the end a neat launching into a neat coda. Just the fact of it being one of Chopin's few works for an instrument besides piano is noteworthy, and it gives the cello a beautiful and challenging part. I think it's a nice little treasure to have such a fine performance here of this rare piece.

Liked it.

Debrucey, you look quite comfortable and relaxed at the piano.

This was easy to listen to! A very engaging performance by both musicians!

Thanks so much guys :-)

Thank you for sharing this. I second the comments made by everyone else. Even though it was a practice session, as always, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Not to be picky about language but I'd hardly call that a practice session!

That "practice" was better than most people's performances!

Well, it was a pre-concert rehearsal, so slightly more serious than a practice session lol. In the second movement of the Barber sonata I was making all sorts of mistakes that I'd never made before, it was really stressful haha. Thankfully the concert itself went ok.

Sorry, you're both right.. I'm doing a million things at once right now and the phrase I wanted (dress rehearsal) escaped my vocabulary at that particular moment. I made a substitution that was inadequate.

I didn't mean at all to detract from the performance with my poor word choice there.. it really was wonderful.

But it wasn't that either -- not wearing dresses.

We're not going to start that again, are we? hahaha

Really good balance. VERY satisfying rendition, i.e. more than just the right notes at the right time.

Well done!

Forrest