The music of the “Poet of the Piano” have inspired a new album of unique arrangements

The piano music of Frédéric Chopin represent some of the most important compositions for the keyboard ever penned. As any pianist will tell you, Chopin’s Preludes, Nocturns, Mazurkas and Études are a vital staple of the piano repertoire.

Jazz composer and performer Chad Lawson has now reimagined several of Chopin’s works for his most recent album, The Chopin Variations, which not only takes its inspiration from Chopin’s music but also from the mechanical workings of the polish composer’s preferred instrument: the Piano.

Lawson was forced to innovate a way of practicing and recording late at night that wouldn’t wake his two small children. By placing felt between the strings and hammers of the instrument to dampen the sound, and by setting microphones in close proximity to the hammers also inside the Piano, Lawson chanced upon a way to capture the subtle, nuanced sounds created by the action of the keyboard’s internal workings, as well as producing a softer, more resonant timbre. The result is an ethereal and delicately coloured sound-world that Lawson has enhanced by adding Violin and Cello accompaniment, as well as some electronic manipulation.

“It’s a risk editing the ‘poet of the piano’” say’s Lawson of his arrangements. “I knew even as bare-bones, Chopin’s works could still be as spellbinding as the original compositions we are so familiar with”.

To really explore Lawson’s experiments with Chopin here is a comparison of Chopin’s unmistakable Waltz in C Sharp Minor (op. 64, No. 2).

This is not the first time Chopin’s music has been a source of inspiration to a musician from a different genre. The prelude in C minor (Op. 28, No. 20) provided the harmony for Barry Manilow’s 1971 hit Could It Be Magic? which would go on to be successfully covered by both disco diva Donna Summer and British boy band Take That.

The Chopin Variations is available now, released by Hillset Records.

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