Dimitry Ablogin Recital in the Orangerie , Darmstadt - 14th March 2025 - Chopin Gesellschaft in der BRD e.V.

As is always the case with this pianist, I am overcome with superlatives. He is one of the great period piano specialists but also has a commanding keyboard technique and deep musical insight that convinces completely on the modern instrument.

This individualistic and highly talented young Russian pianist has studied extensively in Moscow and Frankfurt specializing in the fortepiano (as the period instrument is called in England). He has taken part successfully in many piano competitions and festivals throughout the world. He was awarded an Honourable Mention in the 1st International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments. 2–14 September 2018.  I felt he should have been placed far higher. He performed this evening on a modern instrument.

At the time I first heard him, I wrote of his playing:

'I feel that Ablogin was possibly the only competitor who genuinely attempted to play in the manner described by Chopin’s pupils in the ‘bible’ of Chopin performance: Chopin Pianist and Teacher as seen by his Pupils by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger (Cambridge 1986). Hector Berlioz described Chopin’s playing as soft as ‘the playing of elves’, even requiring one to place one’s ear against the instrument to hear him! Ablogin often gives one a constant feeling of creative improvisation.' 

These observations still apply to his playing. Before approaching his programme, I would like to make a few general remarks about the keyboard playing of Chopin himself which  undoubtedly applies to those of his contemporaries who used the same instruments. 

The first thing one noticed about Ablogin is his relaxed posture at the instrument, with no pent up muscular tension. This comes from playing with almost pure finger technique and not arm weight and use of the shoulder as one would do on a modern instrument. The sound quality is remarkably altered when approached in this way.

Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century recognized two broad schools of pianism. Balzac wrote in 1843 to his Polish mistress Madame Hanska ‘The Hungarian is a demon; the Pole is an angel’. The brilliant and refined style of Chopin, Field, Hummel, Ries and Kalkbrenner owed allegiance to the classical past. This contrasted strongly with the revolutionary Romanticism of ‘The Thunderers’ represented by Liszt and Thalberg. Judging by audience enthusiasm for loud and fast renditions we appear to have returned to the school of ‘thunderers’  with a vengeance.

Those who heard Chopin, ‘the Ariel of pianists’, or were his students regarded him as a unique human being in addition to his being a charismatic teacher and pianist-composer of genius. Like all the best teachers Chopin was a psychologically perceptive man who often improved not only his students’ playing but their listening and entire mental attitude to  the instrument. In his teaching he advocated Bach and recommended a study of the art of the finest Italian bel canto song. Emilie von Gretsch studied with him for two years and wrote of overcoming the ‘perilous difficulties’ of the Etudes concluding after advice which had facilitated some extraordinary progress ‘I think he can read hearts’.[1] 

Listeners and students were much given to metaphysical hyperbole. In 1836 the young Charles Hallé newly resident in Paris wrote to his parents.

‘I went to dine with Baron Eichtal where I heard Chopin. That was beyond all words. The few senses I had have quite left me. I could have jumped into the Seine……Chopin! He is no man, he is an angel, a god (of what can I say more?)…….There is nothing to remind one that it is a human being who produces this music. It seems to descend from heaven……..’[2]

His student Countess Elizavieta Cheriemietieff wrote to her mother in 1842

‘It’s something so ethereal, so transparent, that delicacy, yet his sounds [are] so full, so large…..He’s a genius far above all the pianists who dazzle and exhaust their listeners……It’s a desecration, I find, to play his compositions; nobody understands them.’ [3]

Clearly Chopin was achieving something on the piano that was entirely new and had never been heard before. Such effusions also point up the present dramatic shift in aesthetic perspective of Chopin performance. Clearly radical changes in dynamic level, tempo and interpretative approach have taken place since his death. Closely allied to interpretation is the nature of the sound he extracted from the instruments available to him. He insisted that in the beginning a pupil develop a refined touch and beautiful tone before working on ‘technique’ and velocity. A consideration of the instrument he chose to teach and perform on is a useful and educational corrective confronted as we are by the ubiquitous black Steinway or Yamaha behemoths of the modern concert hall.

Before Frycek left Warsaw permanently he was familiar with all the finest European instruments. Early in his career he favoured instruments by the maker Conrad Graf. Their light Viennese action and distinct ‘fluty’ tone was also preferred by Hummel. Liszt was known to demolish such instruments during the course of his recitals and required spare instruments waiting in the wings. He bragged that he could be heard effortlessly in the back row at La Scala. 

Chopin had become familiar with the refined French Pleyel pianos before leaving Poland. He was to write from Paris to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski ‘Fortepiany Pleyelowskie non plus ultra’, the last word in perfection. The tone of a Pleyel (upright or grand) has a seductive velvet quality to it, slightly diffuse, with light transparent trebles and a rich mahogany bass. Liszt wrote of ‘their silvery and slightly veiled sonority’ and ‘lightness of touch’. The puzzling descriptions of Chopin's playing, his refined nuances, inimitable rubato, cantabile melodic line and delicate ornamentation ‘falling like tiny drops of speckled dew over the melodic figure’ according to Liszt, make absolute sense with the light action and extreme sensitivity of the Pleyel. ‘When I feel out of sorts,’ Chopin would say, ‘I play on an Erard piano where I can easily find a ready-made tone. When I feel in good form and strong enough to find my own individual sound, then I need a Pleyel piano.’ [4]

Many pianists ignore much of the highly sensitive detail in Chopin in favour of the roaring cataracts. Yet Chopin wittily confided to Liszt

‘I am not suited to public appearances – the auditorium saps my courage, I suffocate in the exhalation of the crowd, I am paralysed by curious glances……..but you, you can, since if you should fail to win over the audience you at least have the possibility of murdering them.’ 

He also observed to his student Emilie von Gretsch ‘concerts are never real music; you have to give up the idea of hearing in them the most beautiful things in art.’[5] Chopin may well have been overjoyed by the way the modern Steinway effortlessly realizes the implied dynamic and latent dramatic potential of his compositions. But true passion is generated by limitation not realization. It is the very inadequacy of older instruments that gives them their unique creative tension. Exploring Chopin’s music on an instrument he was known to love, adds a vital dimension to understanding this most inaccessible and mysterious of composers.

---

[1] Quoted in the ‘Chopin Bible’ Chopin: Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger trans. Naomi Shohet with Krysia Osostowicz and Roy Howat ed. Roy Howat (Cambridge 1988) 13

[2] Ibid., 271

[3] Ibid., 278

[4] op. cit., Eigeldinger 26

[5] Ibid., 164-166

 Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Rondo à la Mazur in F major Op. 5 (1825–26)

Mazurka de Chopin (1911) Edward Okuń (1872-1945)

This work was written when Chopin was 16 (such a prodigious genius). He dedicated it to the Countess Alexandrine de Moriolles, the daughter of the Comte de Moriolles, who was the tutor to the adopted son of the Grand Duke Constantine, Governor of Warsaw.

This rather unpleasant individual often requested Chopin to play for him at the Belvedere Palace. Unable to sleep, on winter nights he would ostentatiously send a sleigh drawn by four-horses harnessed abreast in the Russian style to collect the young pianist from his home. Schumann first heard the Rondo à la mazur in 1836, and he called it '...lovely, enthusiastic and full of grace. He who does not yet know Chopin had best begin the acquaintance with this piece'.

This piece was written when Chopin was 16. He dedicated it to the Countess Alexandrine de Moriolles, the daughter of the Comte de Moriolles, who was the tutor to the adopted son of the Grand Duke Constantine, Governor of Warsaw. This rather unpleasant individual often requested Chopin to play for him at the Belvedere Palace. Unable to sleep, on winter nights he would ostentatiously send a sleigh drawn by four-horses harnessed abreast in the Russian style to collect the young pianist from his home. Schumann first heard the Rondo à la mazur in 1836, and he called it 'lovely, enthusiastic and full of grace. He who does not yet know Chopin had best begin the acquaintance with this piece'.

Ablogin invested the work with the grace, youthful exuberance and elegance one could imagine from the Chopin universe allied with his ebullient youthful personality at the time. Ablogin created an intimate ambiance common among the original cultivated audience yet contrasted with intense imaginative expressiveness. The transparency of his playing never omits often unnoticed contrapuntal lines in Chopin often submerged by melody in less distinguished performances. The range of colour, touch, tone, rubato and phrasing transported us into another world of more balanced sensibility to the present. Quite wonderful, even magical.

Learned, rather conventional emotional expressive gestures rather than spontaneous reactions to the musical context were mercifully absent. Ablogin brought charm, style, élan and panache to this work which his relatively light touch created le climat de Chopin (the words of Marcelina Czartoryska, Chopin's finest pupil). Here we have  as a young, carefree, Polish adolescent with character and personality plus, wit, humour, theatrics - a young man striving to please with his massively precocious talent.

A few observations on the mazurka as a genre are appropriate in view of the 'Mazurka Fever' gripping musical Europe and Russia at the time.

The mazurka is the quintessential expression of the Polish national and ethnic identity. Any approach to them is bound to cause comment, sometimes dismissive, sometimes abrasive but never indifferent or detached. One should examine the nature of dancing in Warsaw during the time of Chopin. Almost half of his music is actually dance music of one sort or another and a large proportion of the rest of his compositions contain dances.

Dancing was a passion especially during carnival from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday. It was an opulent time, generating a great deal of commercial business, no less than in Vienna or Paris. Dancing - waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas - were a vital part of Warsaw social life, closely woven into the fabric of the city. The dancers were not restricted to noble families - the intelligentsia  and bourgeoisie also took part in the passion.

Chopin's experience of dance, as a refined gentleman of exquisite manners, would have been predominantly urban ballroom dancing with some experience of peasant hijinks during his summer holidays in Żelazowa Wola, Szafania and elsewhere. Poland was mainly an agricultural society in the early nineteenth century. At this time Warsaw was an extraordinary melange of cultures. Magnificent magnate palaces shared muddy unpaved streets with dilapidated townhouses, szlachta farms, filthy hovels and teeming markets.

By 1812 the Napoleonic campaigns had financially crippled the Duchy of Warsaw. Chopin spent his formative years during this turbulent political period and the family often escaped the capital to the refuge of the Mazovian countryside at Żelazowa Wola. Here the fields are alive with birdsong, butterflies and wildflowers. On summer nights the piano was placed in the garden and Chopin would improvise eloquent melodies that floated through the orchards and across the river to the listening villagers gathered beyond.

Of course he was a perfect mimic, actor, practical joker and enthusiastic dancer as a young man, tremendously high-spirited. He once wrote a verse describing how he spent a wild night, half of which was dancing and the other half playing pranks and dances on the piano for his friends. They had great fun! One of his friends took to the floor pretending to be a sheep! On one occasion he even sprained his ankle he was dancing so vigorously! He would play with gusto and 'start thundering out mazurkas, waltzes and polkas'.

When tired and wanting to dance, he would pass the piano over to 'a humbler replacement'. Is it surprising his teacher Józef Elzner and his doctors advised a period of 'rehab' at Duszniki Zdrój to preserve his health which had already begun to show the first signs of failing? This advice may not have been the best for him or his sister Emilia and Ludwika Skarbek, as reinfection was always a strong possibility there. Both were dead tired not long after their return from the so-called 'cure'.

Many of his mazurkas would have come to life on the dance floor as improvisations. Ablogin made much use of interpolated ornaments perfectly in period character. Perhaps only later were they committed to the more permanent art form on paper under the influence and advice of the Polish folklorist and composer Oskar Kolberg. Chopin floated between popular and art music quite effortlessly.

George Sand wrote in Les Maîtres Sonneurs (The Master Pipers) 'He gave us the finest dances in the world....so attractive and easy to dance to that we seemed to fly through the air.'

 Nocturne B major Op. 9/3

Dimitry Ablogin assembled this programme with great care and thought, as always. His adventurous, exploratory approach was tastefully evident throughout this recital. One aspect of his deeply personal and therefore truly authentic performance was obvious in his introduction and revivification of the art of 'preluding'. The practice of 'preluding' music pieces was common in the Baroque period, the period of Classicism even extending to Romanticism. Such a type of  prelude is a short piece of improvised musical introduction to the key and character of the piece which will be subsequently performed. Ablogin also resuscitated the improvisatory practice of augmentation of decorative fiorituras and ornaments into the notated score in a movingly expressive manner. This practice was often mentioned by Chopin himself in his lessons and letters. It was also occasionally frustratingly  illustrated in his many last minute adjustments to the printed publisher score, even before the ink was dry!

The conception  and varied acceptance of the Chopin Nocturne, which as a genre, is of particularly significant interest in terms of current gender concerns and preoccupations. The broader operatic vocal song and vocal repertoires for the Parisian salon were immensely popular in Warsaw at this time and influenced the piano composition of many romances and nocturnes.

Nocturnes were nearly always concerned with the 'feminine' in Chopin's day, as playing the piano was predominantly a female 'accomplishment'. It is estimated that one in five ladies played the instrument as an attractive talent in the Paris of the mid nineteenth century. In addition, such qualities and talents appeared fictionally in the novels of Jane Austen in order to lure financially comfortable suitors. As such music was considered a love song, their romantic atmosphere often derived from poetic duets sung in opera by soprano and tenor or two sopranos. Chopin often punctuated such emanations with messianic military marches, hymns and laments.

My conception, possibly founded in later psychological research and discovery, is a personal conviction that much of the music of Chopin is based on a rich, inspired balance and contrast achieved between the male and female aspects of human character. In his own music, Robert Schumann also clarified this contrast more directly in his transparent creation of the characters of Florestan and Eusebius residing in his own psyche.

The Nocturne in B major  was composed in Vienna in 1831. It illustrates the profound psychological contrast and oscillation of mood in the unpredictable, turbulent central section common to many of the Chopin Nocturnes.

Ablogin understood the conflicted inner psychological turmoil of the work. First, at the outset, with a legato, captivating undulating theme reminiscent of a barcarolle and the suggestion of waves on a lagoon, a domain often associated with night and love. The enchanting melody is simple, like a song with figuration that Ablogin enhanced in a poignant manner. The agitato mood that fills the middle section of the Nocturne erupts frighteningly and suddenly to disappear just as precipitously.

The section is certainly without feminine cliché, almost menacing and warlike. Ablogin's glorious variation of colour, tone and timbre reflect such changes, as does his interpolation of tastefully improvised fiorituras and augmented decoration. The section combines the march rhythms of possibly, dare I say, 'masculine' insurrectionary song. Any resemblance to a Nocturne by John Field or his supposed influence on Chopin, has been erased.

Nocturne F sharp minor Op. 48/2

This  Nocturne was written in 1841in my favourite key of F sharp minor. When Chopin was teaching his pupil, the rather muscular Adolf Gutmann, he spoke of the middle section of this work in dramatic terms reminiscent of French Grand Opera: 'A tyrant commands, and the other asks for mercy.' It begins with a reflective, lyrical song that Ablogin set in an atmosphere of the dream with expressive perfection.

‘What is most exquisite and most individual in Chopin’s art, wherein it differs most wonderfully from all others,’ noted André Gide in his illuminating text Notes on Chopin, tr. Bernard Frechtman (New York, 1949), p.41. ‘I see in just that non-interruption of the phrase; the insensible, the imperceptible gliding from one melodic proposition to another, which leaves or gives to a number of his compositions the fluid appearance of streams.' 

Again Ablogin emphasized the texture and colour of the middle section of this nocturne which brings a 'relentless, obsessive and dramatic repetition, in every way possible, of a single formula, confounding  all continuity and coherence.' [Mieczysław Tomaszewski]

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)

Piano sonata Op. 6 (1826)

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in 1833

Felix Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist born in 1809. Schumann was born in 1810, as was Chopin, and Liszt followed this glowing caravan of creativity in 1811. These were youthful pianist-composers at a time when the piano was considered a constantly evolving, rather a modern instrument. Beethoven commenced his career in the 1790s as a virtuoso pianist.

Chopin used to visit piano factories in Warsaw, such as the Polish firm Bucholtz, obsessively following new technical developments in the role of what we might now call an 'early adopter'. Composers such as Hummel, Moscheles (a friend of Mendelssohn), Kalkbrenner and Ries were tumultuously adored in a manner similar to pop phenomena today such as Taylor Swift.

Mendelssohn's early concertos are phenomenal works that place him directly beside Mozart in precocity. The sonatas were precursors to the ‘mature’ style in works such as the Rondo capriccioso and the Andante cantabile e Presto agitato.

I must confess to being unfamiliar with this work and was astounded by the harmonic adventurism and sheer confident élan of the writing. One could feel a sense of compositional exploration in many of the harmonies and Ablogin gave us as fine an account as far as I could judge in this case-limited way. A marvelous piece performed magnificently.

Mendelssohn was among the first generation of musicians to experience and come to terms with Beethoven’s complex late style. According to Robert Schumann, in his Piano Sonata in E major Op 6 (1826) the seventeen-year-old Mendelssohn touched:

‘Beethoven with his right hand, while looking up to him as to a saint, and being guided at the other by Carl Maria von Weber (with whom it would be more possible to be on a human footing)’.

Beethoven was a most profound influence on this sonata especially in the cantabile style of the opening phrases in the rather pastoral, zephyr-like first Allegretto con espressione movement.

We hear Beethoven's musical influence on Mendelssohn of the Beethoven ‘Archduke’ Piano Trio (1811) and also the Piano Sonata in A major, Op 101 (1816) that especially fascinated the young Felix.

The minuet second movement with a faster trio section leads directly into the beautiful Adagio. Ablogin  brought an affecting and moving sensitivity to this third movement. The Finale is full of youthful exuberance which Ablogin utilized expressively and fulsomely. Here, we experienced the commanding keyboard virtuosity of Weber that informs the tumultuous conclusion of the sonata. The slow movement ends with powerfully repeated fortissimo chords and descending octaves, launching into the muscular Molto Allegro e vivace last movement.

Structurally, I feel the sonata is not as fluid with that sense of musical inevitability and seamless flow that suffuses so many of Mendelssohn's piano compositions. He, in fact, abandoned writing piano sonatas as an adult. Dimitry Ablogin, who loves the music of Mendelssohn, gave us a fine, coherent and convincing account of this youthful sonata of genius.

John Field (1782-1837)

Nocturne E Minor Op.10

Nocturne A major Op.4

The Moscow of John Field

Illumination in Sobornaya Square in Honour of Emperor Alexander I's Coronation (c. 1802) Fyodor Alekseyev

Among early composers it was John Field who was famed for his nocturnes. Many lovers were transported to sensual realms in salons by his lyricism. When Chopin wrote works in this genre, he was naturally connected to Field, not least perhaps by the associated Slavic nature of Chopin being Polish and Field living in Russia. Although commonly associated in influence, it is clear in musical profundity they are quite disparate in many respects. Chopin takes us to distant and deep realms of emotional feeling and expression scarcely entered by Field.

The term 'serenade' is sometimes given to Field's compositions in this genre and sweetly seductive they are. However, the Polish composer and music critic Józef Sikorski (1813-1896), writes penetratingly of the disparate nature in comparison with Field:

'Chopin's nocturnes, meanwhile, for the most part pictures on a dark background, spirits flowing down to the earth at night, appear and disappear here mysteriously. Fantasy in disarray leads us, in unfathomable phrases, as if in a dream from object to object, from thought to thought. And as in a dram we succumb to a force incomprehensible to us when awake...we follow him across the depths and the heights; yielding to the magical sway, we comprehend the logic of feelings, we understand the fantasy turned into reality...struggling to break free from the power of the mysterious world to which the poet [Chopin] has subjected us...'  

[Józef Sikorski 'Recollections of Chopin': The Earliest Essay on Chopin and His Music taken from the remarkable book Chopin and his World Jonathan Bellman and Halina Goldberg Ed p.70, Princeton 2017]

Yet, listening to the extreme simplicity, refinement  and economy of means in these Field nocturnes played with much refinement by Ablogin, it is hardly surprising that the aristocratically cultivated Chopin was seduced by them to create his own augmented creations of the form. Field was well-known in 19^th-century Europe both as teacher and pianist.

Ablogin fully comprehends this purposefully created intimate ambiance of the nocturne and continued to reduce the audience to utter silence - a variety of hypnotism in operation distinguished by the sheer quality of these beautiful, intense, subtly ornamented cantabile melodies. Such a pity the Field nocturnes are not better known for themselves and not simply as shadows that influenced the immortal creations of Fryderyk Chopin.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 – 1837)

Piano Sonata in F sharp minor Op. 81

I. Allegro

II. Largo con molt'espressione

III. Vivace

I have been to the city of Weimar at least three times and consider it one of the most remarkable small cities in Europe, an ideological capital if you will, but now harbouring only the ghosts of Europe's squandered Enlightenment ideals. Ah, dearest Weimar ! What a history you have and as a city are such symbolic representation of Europe ! Surely, no small place has experienced such a concentration of resident musical (Bach, Anton Rubinstein, Schumann, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss) literary (Goethe, Schiller, the setting for the  romantic novel Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann) and architectural genius (the Bauhaus movement) as well as attracting so many illustrious musical visitors. 

The city had only a population of perhaps 12,000 souls when Liszt chose to live so scandalously with Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein at the Villa Altenberg and teach at his renowned school in the town. Marlene Dietrich even studied the violin in Weimar and became embroiled in a love affair with her teacher. Then came the Weimar Republic, the calamity of the Nazis and the Third Reich, the construction of their bombastic buildings and ultimately Buchenwald...

 

Goethe's idyllic Summer House in Weimar by the River Ilm

Why do I mention Weimar in connection with this recital? Well, one of my favorite composers lived and worked there. Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 – 1837) was an Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music reflects the transition from the Classical to the Romantic musical periods. He is an underestimated musical genius of the greatest inventiveness both in chamber music and piano concertos. At the age of eight, Hummel was taught and housed by Mozart for two years free of charge in Vienna. He made his first concert appearance at the age of nine with Mozart in Dresden (1787) in one of Mozart's concerts. 

Hummel, among other distinguished positions in an incredibly distinguished career, held the position of Kapellmeister in Weimar from 1819 to 1837. He formed a close friendship with Goethe and read the poetry of Schiller, who also lived there but had died in 1805. During Hummel's stay in Weimar he made the city into a European musical capital, inviting the best musicians of the day to visit and perform. He brought one of the first musicians' pension schemes into existence and was one of the first musicians to agitate for musical copyright to combat intellectual piracy.

Hummel also had an incalculable influence on the style brillante of the early compositions by Fryderyk Chopin - the concertos and many variations, rondos and other solo works. He performed in Warsaw in 1828 to great acclaim, members of the audience standing on their chairs in order to better observe how he performed his famous trills. The composer developed a close relationship with Poles and admired the pianist Maria Szymanowska greatly.

Of all Hummel’s keyboard sonatas, the Sonata in F sharp minor, Op 81 (1819) is highly adventurous suiting Ablogin's temperament, as it inhabits the cusp of the Classical and Romantic. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer found the work ‘meaningful, noble, spirited, pathetic, skilful, logical, novel, and pianistically resourceful to an extent truly deserving the term 'Grosse Sonate' and making it the finest, also the most difficult, among all sonatas to date’.

The youthful Schumann in his letter to Friedrich Wieck wrote perceptively:

'Ein wahrhaft großes, episches Titanenwerk und das Gemälde eines ungeheuren, ringenden, resignirten Geistes'

'A truly great, epic titanic work and the painting of a tremendous, struggling, resigned spirit…' (trans. Ablogin)

The Allegro first movement was wildly dramatic yet became reflective as if partaking of some tumultuous fantasy. Hummel’s con brio semiquaver runs in fourths and thirds must have been a challenge to pianists not only of his day but also of today! The slow Largo con molt’espressione opened unexpectedly not with a tender exhalation but fortissimo in anger. These romantic tempestuous explosions continued in a rather Chopinesque fashion but with less emotional depth and disturbance. The Vivace finale was rather folkloric in atmosphere but made quite fantastic demands on the technique of the performer. Hummel provides a blessed quiet fugal passage in what was a relentless drive to a sensational and exhilarating conclusion.

Needless to say, Ablogin rose to the occasion demanded by this 'titanic' sonata with musical inspiration and comprehensive command of the entire keyboard.

Hummel's grave in Weimar

Hummel was a chamber musician of the greatest genius evident in his own rarely performed chamber compositions. For a fine example of Hummel's fiery genius, I refer you to his glittering chamber ensemble transcription for piano, flute, violin and cello of Mozart's Symphony No.40 in G minor KV 550 (1788) composed just three years before his death. This transfiguring work, magically transformed by Hummel in 1824, is a graceful flight over a chiaroscuro landscape fluctuating between light and shade.

[The only detailed modern history of Weimar I know in any language is the magnificent Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present by Michael H. Kater (Yale 2014)]

For an encore Ablogin gave us a superbly glittering style brillante account of the Mendelssohn Rondo capriccioso. This was followed by a moving, highly ornamented and varied augmentation of Chopin Nocturne in E flat major Op.9/2. For the Polish musicologist, critic and composer  Zdzisław Jachimecki (1882-1953), this Nocturne is ‘an example of a rare sense of stylistic purity’.

The statement could surely be applied to this entire spiritually uplifting and musically rewarding recital by Dimitry Ablogin. In a time of tragic and scarcely comprehensible horrors of war, this creative expression in music was unutterably welcome.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

A highly recommended Chopin recording on Chopin's last Pleyel piano in Warsaw  

by 

Dimitry Ablogin

NIFCCD 149
https://sklep.nifc.pl/en/produkt/77317-late-works-opp-45-64

My review of this CD

http://www.michael-moran.com/2023/12/endymion-1818-john-keats-1795-1821.html