Chanter Avec Les Doigts

"You have to sing with your fingers!" - Frederic Chopin is said to have often demanded of his pupils during piano lessons. On which instruments could this demand be better realized than on the pianos of his time that he preferred? For this recording, the young Austrian pianist Martin Nobauer selected five historical instruments that were built between 1829 and 1853. Although there are only 24 years in between, the development in sound aesthetics from the rather thin and transparent sound of the earlier instruments to the fuller, rounder sound of the Pleyel grand piano from 1842 and especially the erard grand piano from 1853 is clearly perceptible. The works chosen for this album were composed in close temporal proximity to the creation of the instruments: the Piano Sonata in B minor op. 58, the Impromptu in G-flat major op. 51, the Mazurkas op. 50 as well as the Ballade op. 52 and the Fantaisie op. 49, both in F minor.