Chopin: Waltz #2 In A Flat, Op. 34/1, "Valse Brillante" - Géza Anda

Geza Anda (1921 -- 1976) shared Chopin's reverence of singing as the ideal for piano technique; Wilhelm Furtwangler called him the troubadour of the keyboard. His final recording was a 1975 set of the Waltzes. The standard sequence generally evolves from youthful optimism and vigor to more pensive nostalgia, as if the composer were increasingly viewing society and life from afar. Anda tempers and decelerates the earlier numbers to create a more uniform mood of wistful contemplation throughout. Most remarkable is the impact of taming the dynamics and adding a minute or so to the usual pace of Op. 34/1, arguably the most exhilarating Chopin Waltz, which Lipatti used as the thrilling conclusion of his reordered cycle. In Anda's hands, the result is altogether autumnal and retrospective, suggesting a depth barely evident from typical renditions. Anda's set paves the way for Ravel's 1920 La Valse, a multifaceted piece that both crystallizes and challenges the waltz as the vehicle for blissful abandon. It also raises the question of why and for whom Chopin really wrote his Waltzes -- the nominal purpose of pleasing his society patrons, or as a means by which he submerged his own feelings of melancholy within an outwardly carefree vessel. Thus does Anda invest the most nominally insubstantial form in which Chopin composed with a profound weight and interior dimension that invokes the extreme effort by which Chopin infused his work with repressed emotion.