Chopin – Waltz in C sharp minor – Op.64 No.2 – (Kawai K200)

This is one of my favorite waltzes and was one of the pieces that made me fall in love with Chopin. I have dreamed about playing this for about 2 years and I am thrilled to finally be able to play it. Even though I can’t really play this piece in a high level, it feels really good to play it. This recording is really the best that I can do for now, but I hope over a few years my interpretation will mature into a truly nice performance.

I have spent over 2 months preparing this piece and I tried my best to address all the musical nuances to play it well. However, at some point, I just hit a barrier where I couldn’t improve my playing anymore. Things like pedaling, rubato and phrase shaping are critical to step up my performance to the next level, but those are very difficult musical aspects to master. In particular, the rubato, the appropriate time fluctuations to convey expressiveness, is very important and can have a dramatic impact in the quality of the interpretation. I did my best to do a nice rubato, but it is one of those things that a “beginner” amateur pianist really can’t master. To be honest, it is a bit frustrating to have this “ideal sound image” and being unable to reach it due to technical limitations. The small upright piano also limits the range of colors that I can use, so the end result was far from what I would hope to achieve. Nevertheless, with all things considered, I think I did a nice job with this piece.

PS: I am having a very annoying issue with my computer, where random glitches are appearing, interrupting the computer’s activity for a few milliseconds. It was impossible to do a 4-minute recording without having at least one of those glitches. I had two decent takes ruined by these glitches, so I had to edit two takes together, in 3 parts. It is obvious due to the camera angle change. I have to fix that otherwise it will be very difficult to record longer pieces.

The recording was made using a pair of condenser microphones, AKG P170, placed above the top lid of my upright piano, a Kawai K200.