# Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 2



## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

How do you rate this piece?

Performed with the Polish Festival Orchestra, conducted by Zimerman


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## Scherzi Cat (8 mo ago)

While Chopin's solo piano music is almost all excellent, I'm afraid his concertante works are merely "very good".  I love them and listen to them often, but I know that the orchestration doesn't match that of other romantic virtuoso composers for piano concertos such as Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

I've voted "Very Good" also, but have never been sure of the basis for the often heard idea that Chopin's orchestration was deficient. As a non-specialist in such matters I don't have a problem with it, but would welcome other views.


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## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

Very good.


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Excellent! I don't think Chopin was capable of composing a work involving piano, whether solo or concertante, that was less than excellent!


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I'm evaluating a piano concerto and not a Ravel poem, thus for me alone orchestration is not of the highest concern. Chopin has created unique and timeless developments, only one or two works can be 10/10, but these are some excellent concertos and I should vote excellent? I suppose. 5/6 - Excellent.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I don't like either of Chopin's piano concerti. In fact, I don't like any of the works he wrote for piano and orchestra. His solo piano works, chamber and lieder are his strong suits. More intimate and less bogged down by trying to write for an orchestra, which he simply couldn't do well. His orchestration is just as bad as Schumann's.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I voted very good, Krystian Zimerman . Yundi , Maria João Pires are amongst ma favourites however Daniil Trifonov makes it very special in my ears these days.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

There are those extremely rare times I think something's wrong with peoples' ears.


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

Neo Romanza said:


> I don't like either of Chopin's piano concerti. In fact, I don't like any of the works he wrote for piano and orchestra. His solo piano works, chamber and lieder are his strong suits. More intimate and less bogged down by trying to write for an orchestra, which he simply couldn't do well. His orchestration is just as bad as Schumann's.


Wow! While it might be known that Chopin had problems in orchestration,etc., taken as music comparable to all other major concertos, Chopin works are popular. I agree with animal drummer. It is not worth the time for me to somehow convince myself these are inferior works. I like them over Rach's 2+3 piano concertos. To me, Rach 3 seems very clumsy in orchestration and yet very popular.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

To my ears, this is an excellent concerto, one of great melodic beauty and delicacy, and a cornerstone of the genre in the romantic era. My favorite movement is the second, followed by the first and then the third, but I quite enjoy all of them. It's an 8.5 in terms of how much I like it.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Neo Romanza said:


> His solo piano works, chamber and lieder


Lieder are German songs. He wrote Polish songs; and they're titled "Polish Songs".


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> Lieder are German songs. He wrote Polish songs; and they're titled "Polish Songs".


Nah, I'm going to continue calling them lieder despite what you say. Songs, lieder, mélodies...they're all the same to me.


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## Lisztianwagner (2 mo ago)

Excellent; I think this Piano Concerto doesn't have the same beautiful power of suggestion and poetry of Chopin's solo piano music (at least in the orchestral part, which in fact sounds a bit too secondary, while in the piano part the naturalness and the expressive depth of his composing ability for the keyboard can be definitely perceivable), but it's a very remarkable work.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

deleted


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Excellent, of course, part of any musicologist's top 100 pieces ever.

Chopins's two concertos are wonderful, evergreen and full of his supernatural writing. Arguments that his miniatures were better and his orchestration less than successful have always seemed to me silly. Chopin was the greatest poet of the keyboard that ever lived and he left us two remarkable concertos for those of us that enjoy that format.

Among highlights are the crystalline beauty of the central larghetto, a miracle of keyboard magic, especially with that clarinet following the keyboard line in the final pages.

I will say, however, that the recording used to open this discussion is pretty awful -- pushed and pulled like taffy and never letting the composer speak.

Try the great Artur Rubinstein or Ashkenazy to hear better understanding of this music.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

larold said:


> Excellent, of course, part of any musicologist's top 100 pieces ever.
> Arguments that his miniatures were better and his orchestration less than successful have always seemed to me silly.


They're musicologists' arguments.
"Chopin's fellow composers and Prof. Elsner's former students, Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807-1867) and Tomasz Nidecki (1807-1852), are believed to have helped him orchestrate his piano concertos. This gave an excuse for other musicians to make slight alterations in the score.[4][5]Alfred Cortot created his own orchestration of the F minor concerto and recorded it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under John Barbirolli in 1935.[6] Ingolf Wunder recorded Alfred Cortot's orchestration with minor changes done by himself in 2015.[7] More recently (in 2017), Mikhail Pletnev recorded his arrangements of both of Chopin's piano concertos, conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with pianist Daniil Trifonov."


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