How true and how heart-touching is that !?
For us pianists, our pianos remain our best friend throughout our entire lives. Life goes on, people come and go, they might abandon us, ignore us, abuse us, lie to us, betray us, be unkind to us, but throughout it all there is our piano - our best friend to help us through.
When we experience difficulties in dealing with the hardships of life with no one to talk to, there is always piano - our heart, our soul, our confidant, our best friend. It comforts us in our darkest moments and knows our deepest secrets.
For Chopin - he had only piano to comfort him when George Sand, the love of his life left him, which broke his heart and eventually killed him.
How deeply devastating, and how profoundly beautiful at the same time !
History says that we lost Chopin to tuberculosis, but I believe that we lost him to the heartbreak that substantially worsened his health condition and consequently resulted in his premature death. If not for his piano though, I am sure we would have lost him even sooner.
For so many pianists, myself included, piano remains our most steadfast support and the most powerful shield from everything painful that life might throw at us.
I selected two profoundly moving music pieces for you to listen today.
Both lyrical, nostalgic, deeply emotional, and also both performances being the best of its kind, to my opinion, especially Yuja Wang's, who surprised me with this performance showing a different, more refined and sublime side of her pianistic prowess, which I did not expect, but embrace wholeheartedly. Bravo Yuja !
The poetic, lyrical, almost outer-worldly Maria João Pires' performance is something to be expected. She never fails to touch our hearts with her typical sublime crystalline sound and vast range of feelings, especially with her interpretation of Chopin's Nocturnes, which to my opinion, mount in artistic quality of expression over everything she recorded, and over every other recording of Chopin's Nocturnes performed by other pianists in the history of music recording.
1. Listen to C. W. Gluck's 'Orfeo and Euridice' Wq. 30 (arranged for piano by Sgambati), the best ever performance by Yuja Wang:
2. Listen to F. Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor, the best ever performance by Maria João Pires:
NOTE: "The ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice (Greek: Ὀρφεύς, Εὐρυδίκη, Orpheus, Eurydikē) concerns the fateful love of Orpheus of Thrace for the beautiful Eurydice. Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope. The subject is among the most frequently retold of all Greek myths, being featured in numerous works of literature, operas, ballets, paintings, plays and more recently, films and video games."
~ Wikipedia
Beautiful performance of both music pieces. Beautiful article. Thank you Xenia Elizabeth Zilli.