 Les quatre poèmes pour piano et orchestre que Chopin composa avant ses vingt-cinq ans ne sont en rien anecdotiques. Il y revisite l’esprit des Konzertstück si en vogue chez les virtuoses compositeurs, l’exemple le plus célèbre restant celui de Weber. Mais adieux forêts romantiques, c’est d’abord le pianiste d’estrade qui parlera dans une série de variations en forme de paraphrase sur le fameux duo Don Giovanni-Zerlina ; Ekaterina Litvintseva prend garde de ne pas les faire trop brillantes, les jouant avec esprit et d’un pianisme fluide. Les trois autres opus célèbrent une Pologne immémoriale, danses et airs stylisés qui seront prétextes à des feux d’artifices pianistique mâtinés de mélodies nostalgiques, cette alternance culminant dans le chef d’œuvre de la série, l’étreignante Krakowiak où Chopin a marié mieux qu’ailleurs le piano et l’orchestre, ce que la direction sur les pointes, toute en subtilités, de Vahan Mardirossian souligne. L’alliage avec le jeu sans démonstration de sa pianiste, cherchant l’élégiaque, fait aussi merveille dans la Fantaisie sur des Air Polonais, son apport est moindre dans la Grande polonaise, où le petit orchestre n’est qu’un habillage et qu’Eketarina Litvintseva joue plus lyrique que virtuose, me rappelant l’élégance qu’y mettait Stefan Askenase – le parallèle est plus éclairant dans la Krakowiak. Beau nouvel album d’une musicienne dont jusque là j’ai aimé tous les disques. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé) The two early concertos of Chopin are repertoire works, deservedly so, for their prodigious synthesis of virtuoso finesse and lyricism. However, the composer’s music for piano and orchestra does not stop there: he produced a quartet of standalone concertante pieces, each on the scale of his concerto first movements, which once were recorded as fill-ups to the concertos but have been neglected in recent years. The Russian pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva redresses this neglect with a beautifully polished new album of all four pieces, for which she receives warmly idiomatic support from the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of Pardubice, on an intimate scale which the composer would have recognised (and preferred). Chopin wrote his variations of Mozart’s ‘La ci darem’ as a prodigally talented teenager, a composition exercise for his teacher back in Warsaw. While cast in the popular style of its time – a grand introduction for a popular operatic melody, elaborated with pianistic sleights of hand for maximum effect, and a rousing finale – the piece is inspired with moments of originality that elevate it above contemporary comparison pieces. The Fantasy on Polish Airs and the Krakowiak soon followed, as Chopin was becoming celebrated across Europe as a new star of that new instrument, the piano. The themes in the Krakowiak are Chopin’s own,but their character is designedly Polish – mystic in the Romantic, piano-and-horn-led introduction, then sparkling with gaiety in the main Allegro. The same kind of formal balance is developed in the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Op.22: it opens with the kind of ethereal melody which would soon become known as inimitably characteristic of Chopin, the dreamer of the piano, pre-eminent master of his art in the generation after Beethoven at translating a poetic consciousness and private thoughts into the domain of music.
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