Music

Fryderyk Chopin, Op. 28, No. 4 (Prelude 4, 18); Alfred Cortot, 1933. A beautifully gloomy piece, and one of the easiest of Chopin’s preludes to play. (The appellation “Suffocation” was not from Chopin, who abhorred having titles on his pieces and was notedly a bit uncomfortable with language in general, but von Bülow, a self-confessed egoist and master faux pas-rtist.)

Show Content

Spoiler

A lot of people find this guy’s playing very strange, but this is mostly attributed to that he was one of the few Romantic-style players who was recorded extensively, and a good number of people who study these things believe that the things people find weirdest (missed notes when playing from memory, playing the left hand part like a grace note) were all fairly normal in the performances of that period.