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Outstanding performances and unforgettable moments at the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition!

Once again, our unmistakable Sound of Excellence fills the big stage and inspires audiences of classical music lovers around the world at this year’s Chopin Piano Competition.

With every nuance, every delicate pianissimo, and every powerful passage, it becomes clear why this competition is one of the most renowned events on the international classical music scene.

Congratulations to the talented pianist Tiankun Ma and the outstanding pianist Yulia Nakashima!

Their masterful interpretations, marked by technical brilliance, captured Chopin’s soul in an incomparable way, making the performances unforgettable.

Discover the performances of these exceptional artists, and look forward to a review of a special event by C. Bechstein in honor of the Chopin Competition. 

Relive the magic and watch the performances by Yulia Nakashami and Tiankun Ma !

Tigran Hamasyan Tiny Desk Concert

Tigran Hamasyan is an Armenian pianist who plays mostly original compositions, which are influenced by traditional Armenian folk music. The compositions often utilize unique scales and modalities which give his work a truly interesting style. In addition to Tigran’s folk influence, he is often influenced by American jazz, incorporating dissonant, complex chords into his songs.

Hamasyan has been living in his home country of Armenia since the pandemic began, and he’s taken these unsettling times as an opportunity to catch up on projects that have been remained unfinished; Some for years. For many musicians who previously spent most of their waking hours on the road touring, it’s one of the few benefits of the COVID-19 lockdown- the ability to get old things done and finally move onto new work.

Similar to musicians, the infamous Tiny Desk Concerts have also been forced to adapt to this year. The overall premise of the desk concerts was to showcase a musician at the offices of NPR in a small, intimate setting. That kind of environment isn’t difficult to replicate when it’s turned into the homes of the artists themselves. (Usually their bedroom, or a corner of the house.) Hamasyan jumped at the opportunity to do his own home concert in conjunction with NPR. The first performance in his Tiny Desk (home) concert, “Road Song,” features a melody Hamasyan wrote in 2008, but eventually recorded on his 2013 album, Shadow Theater. Hamasyan will  frequently play a solo version of the song live, but had never played it alone in a studio until now. Then follows “Our Film,” from his latest and project, The Call Within. This performance mirrors the intensity and sentimentality of the album version, but here it’s more intimate and fanciful. The last tune, “A Fable,” is the title track of his 2011 solo album, which was inspired by the writings of 13th century Armenian Vardan Aygektsi.

Click here to learn more about the work of Tigran Hamsyan.

Click here to see other Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR.

Click here to read other articles from Michelle’s Piano.

This Wednesday will mark a particularly unique anniversary for both Classical Music and audio engineering. On the 29th of June 1888 at the Ninth Triennial Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace in London, the American colonel George Edward Gouraud wowed British spectators with a new, marvel invention: Thomas Edison’s new phonograph, updated from his original 1877 design. The civil war veteran descended from ambitious stock: his father, Francis Fauvel Gouraud, an engineer from France, had previously introduced into the US daguerreotypes for then primitive photography in 1839. Now, 49 years later, his son, acting as de-facto foreign agent to Edison would make his mark in the country by becoming a pioneer in the booming technology sector.

Edison’s new phonograph would exceed the limitations of his own original design, as Gouraud made evident by setting up the recording device some 100 yards distance from the stage which had been erected at the Crystal Palace to honor the works of the late German-turned-British composer George Friedrich Handel in both music and song.

The limitations of recording technology at that time, together with the number of voices, the distance of the recording device from the singers and the acoustics of the Crystal Palace, mean that the recorded sound was dim to begin with, and it has since then become badly degraded. What survives is barely audible but still identifiable by ear, and gives some insight into performance practices at the height of the Handel Festival phenomenon.

Israel in Egypt is a biblical oratorio by the composer George Frideric Handel. Most scholars believe the libretto was prepared by Charles Jennens, who also compiled the biblical texts for Handel’s Messiah. It is composed entirely of selected passages from the Old Testament, mainly from Exouds and the Psalms.

If you would like to listen to the original 1888 recording, you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qDwz3JdD1c

Edison with his phonograph