Late Chopin Works (2018)

American pianist Kevin Kenner has specialized in Chopin, traveling to Poland, winning acclaim there, and recording unusual material. With this 2018 release he has taken his work to a new level, having been signed to the large Warner Classics label and undertaking an original programming concept with a newly reconstructed work of his own, a hypothetical, and plausible, completion of Chopin's unfinished Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68, No. 4. (The work was found among Chopin's papers by his British student after his death.) The ... Read More

American pianist Kevin Kenner has specialized in Chopin, traveling to Poland, winning acclaim there, and recording unusual material. With this 2018 release he has taken his work to a new level, having been signed to the large Warner Classics label and undertaking an original programming concept with a newly reconstructed work of his own, a hypothetical, and plausible, completion of Chopin's unfinished Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68, No. 4. (The work was found among Chopin's papers by his British student after his death.) The main concept set out in the album's title is a debatable one, and few pianists have attempted to realize it: Chopin wasn't planning on dying, and the idea of a late style in his case doesn't work as clearly as it does for Beethoven or even Schumann. Moreover, most of these works, with the exception of the Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58, and the second mazurka from the Op. 56 set, aren't among the most frequently performed Chopin pieces, and the two exceptions are the earliest... Read Less