Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - From the Reviewer's Notebook

Yes, I have been neglecting concerts in Warsaw lately but then I do have a life outside music! This applied to the recent Krystian Zimerman concert for which I found it impossible to buy a ticket and received mixed reports - not the musicianship which was as ever at the highest level but on his diffident attitude to his loving Polish audience.  The frankly rather strange personality traits of famous concert pianists deserves psychological study...a unique bunch to say the least. Perhaps it is the necessarily obsessive time spent alone compulsively attempting to dominate the 'great machine' known as the pianoforte . Arthur Rubinstein is a great exception to my mind being a wonderfully broad, intelligent, discriminating, amusing and sophisticated human being as well as being a great artist. His playing always reflected these rich character qualities. The behavior of the majority of concert artists and the ossified format of the conventional classical concert in