Chopin: Four Scherzi (Li Yundi)

"How will gravity array itself, if wit is already cloaked so darkly?" Schumann’s bewilderment at Chopin’s first scherzo is easily understood, because Chopin’s treatment of the form must count as one of the most radical & effective transfigurations ever effected in classical music. A scherzo (literally, “joke”) was meant to be pithy, light, humorous. Beethoven had started to bend the form in darker directions, but in Chopin’s hands the humble little scherzo, the light relief between more substantial movements, exploded into menacing life.

In every possible way Chopin's scherzi are a radical break from what came before. They are dark, trenchant, violent, mercurial, alternately anxious and transcendently lyrical (every single scherzo contains one of Chopin’s most inspired melodies). Each scherzo opens with a little gesture of immense suggestiveness, before rocketing into passages whose startling drama has a kind of demonic power. These are scherzos whose purpose is not the brightness and levity with which they were previously associated: they are large-scale, fully romantic, paroxysmally expressive works.

Li Yundi’s playing is superb. The playing is as articulate as it is fiery, as predatory as it is supple, and the rubato (which can be quite generous at times) is perfectly moulded to create pools of light & stillness standing like islands in the murk. Each scherzo is vividly characterized: the first is pure schizophrenia, the second a study in the integration of huge contrasts, the third fleet and unsentimental (listen to the way the chorale, previously understated, swells into a thing of true beauty in the coda at 25:56), and the fourth is restrained carefully to allow for the build-up to the grand statement at the end.

00:00 – No.1, Op.20 in B Minor
09:29 – No.2, Op.31 in Bb Minor
19:29 – No.3, Op.39 in C# Minor
27:33 – No.4, Op.54 in E Major

Видео Chopin: Four Scherzi (Li Yundi) канала Ashish Xiangyi Kumar