This is genuinely a good waltz.
Sometimes, they will discover a lost piece by some known composer, and the media will pick it up. But imo, when you have a listen, it often turns out that the piece had been lost for a reason.
What makes this waltz remarkable as a new discovery, in my opinion, is that it is more or less a finished work; the composition is so distinctively a work by Chopin; and the work brings something novel to the oeuvre.
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As for the debut, I think someone involved could have been more thoughtful. It feels as if some people in NYC saw a chance to be the first to debut, and they ran with it. It was published in the NYTimes, with a New York-based pianist, with New York’s “Steinway Hall,” which reads like a product placement. Chopin wrote these intimate pieces for the acoustics of small, intimate settings, and for nothing like a modern Steinway concert grand piano.
Maybe they could have instead worked with some local cultural organization in Poland, which could have made the debut a significant local cultural thing? Maybe taking the chance to promote an early-career pianist from Chopin’s homeland, rather than the career of a world-famous New Yorker?
Sometimes, they will discover a lost piece by some known composer, and the media will pick it up. But imo, when you have a listen, it often turns out that the piece had been lost for a reason.
What makes this waltz remarkable as a new discovery, in my opinion, is that it is more or less a finished work; the composition is so distinctively a work by Chopin; and the work brings something novel to the oeuvre.
——
As for the debut, I think someone involved could have been more thoughtful. It feels as if some people in NYC saw a chance to be the first to debut, and they ran with it. It was published in the NYTimes, with a New York-based pianist, with New York’s “Steinway Hall,” which reads like a product placement. Chopin wrote these intimate pieces for the acoustics of small, intimate settings, and for nothing like a modern Steinway concert grand piano.
Maybe they could have instead worked with some local cultural organization in Poland, which could have made the debut a significant local cultural thing? Maybe taking the chance to promote an early-career pianist from Chopin’s homeland, rather than the career of a world-famous New Yorker?