Chopin- Ballade No 1. in G minor, Op 23 (Krystian Zimerman) REACTION & REVIEW 

You actually took my suggestion!! I'm actually surprised, most reaction channels just ignore the comments. Props to you!! Hope you enjoyed the performance as well Edit: this is not my real name🤣🤣 but props for trying that too

Zimermam's interpretation of this Chopin ballade will give anyone goosebumps, there are so many feelings...😢😮 Chopin made me love classical music/piano, today I'm a piano student with a dream involving my hands and my heart!!!

Genuinely 3-4 years ago I first heard this piece and it shook to my core, I had never played the piano before but I instantly started practicing. Just learnt it several months ago. By the way Krystian Zimmerman and this recording of this piece and several other is my favorite of all time, to me he’s the best Chopin player ever, the highest peak.

Masterclass. One of the great performance ever of this ballade n 1 of Chopin. Thank you for this video.

This is one of the best pieces of music ever written

Wow. Unreal facility! Unreal precision! Classical piano is fun to watch.

Amazing choice! This is one of Chopins most cherished pieces and Zimermans playing is incredible (even tho i don't always agree with his interpretative choices). Check out the other Chopin Ballades, they all are incredible in their range of character and narrative quality!

These are all utterly fantastic. I'd love for you to listen to the other 3 ballades by Zimerman.

From one moment to the next you never know quite where the melody is going next, as it circles around the main theme before disintegrating in the moment of its exposition. That sense of unpredictability is very characteristic of Chopin There's something heroic and tragic about it at the same time, nobility in the throes of dying. I cannot say whether Zimmerman made any mistakes or not, although I suspect there must always be the odd stray note, as the score traverses several octaves in a matter of seconds, but it is a very thrilling performance. Soloists at his level know these pieces intimately, and every passage has been worked out in every detail over many years. So you would never expect to see a score. If you want to see a pianists fingers turn to a stupendous blur, look up some encores of George Czifrs, who was famous for his incredible improvisations, which lesser pisnists would invest months of their time in attempting to transcribe.

Amazing, his hands glide over the keys like a sorcerer weaving a spell. What a great choice for a solo piece.

A beautiful piece, that Chopin certainly knew his way around a keyboard. And coincidently, I was only listening to this 2 days ago, but as played by Ms Y Wang.

About time this channel got some class!!!

Wow... I had to learn this one in 7 piano. How fucking difficult Chopin is to play, but what wonderful melodies.

Hi Justin. Dave from London, In The Evening. Really enjoyed this performance. It's so great you react to such a wide range of music. Keep it going, please.

This particular Chopin piece changed my life when I first heard it. And I've heard many stories of how it changed the lives of others too. It's so powerful and a landmark in human creativity.

If playing this is insane, just think how mad it is to compose something like this ... That's beyond my comprehension ...

Wow!!! Yes, the great Krystian Zimerman. My wife and I were lucky enough to see and hear a great performance of Beethoven's 4th piano concerto in Parma a few years ago. You must hear his Schubert D960!

I fell in love with this upon hearing Vladimir Horowitz play it at Carnegie Hall televised concert in 1968...A Renaissance of this wonderful piece came when the movie "the Pianist" came out and there was a poignant scene in which the runaway Jewish prisoner plays this piece in front of the German officer who is quietly allowing the escapee to sleep in his office

Loved this one! You must react to the other 3 ballades as well they're just as amazing

Dang. Chopin looks good for his age.

Must be one of the best bersions I have heard.

Listening to, and as you said, watching a classical music performance evokes so many things to me. It takes me back to a very different time, a time when we courted our young lady; we dressed to go see a concert; I mean, can you imagine Mr. Zimerman dressed in a t-shirt and jeans seated at that piano. I hadn't even noticed the lack of sheet music until you mentioned it. Amazing.

Love the variety in your selections.

I used to able to play this (nowhere near as good as Mr. Zimmerman I should add). The coda is quite tricky. I could never get close to playing No.4 though. I could do bits, but it was somehow just beyond my limited technique. It’s on another level.

I suggest a piano concerto performance, then you get the added drama and spectacle of an orchestra interacting with the soloist. If you went for Yuja Wang playing Liszt at the 2022 BBC Proms you get the 'benefit' of Rick Wakeman's critique from the studio. But maybe that's best for a long song Saturday.

What the hell was that? *Glorious.* Just astounding.

if you go to a recital by a classical pianist, it is pretty unusual to see them have any music on the stand. As for this particular magnificent piece and in no way trying to imply that it is anything other than fiendishly difficult to play, it is nevertheless considered standard repertoire for professional classical pianists.

Zimerman is one of the great - if you wanna see more, i could recommend some short extract from the opposite side of the spectrum: 1.) it is more recent 2.) it is from another time, another mood. It is some American music history: "The Masques" from Bernsteins 2nd symphony "Age of Anxiety" - that's a so cool jazz ride with lots of fun and you see the musicians enjoy it too.

Chopin (SHOW-pan). Romantic-era piano is one of my favorite genres of all and Chopin is one of the greats.

Discovered this piece not so long ago thanks to a music exam in school, Chopin really was excellent and ahead of his time, his pieces were very whack in the sense that you didn't know where was the music going to go. Excellent reaction Justin! PD: I don't know if you've reacted to these yet but I'd recommend you these 3 pieces: The Firebird by Stravinsky; Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti and the Egmont Overture by Beethoven.

Thanks Fedegwagwa! Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2 beckons . Then , perhaps a taste from these all timers ? : Mozart Piano Concerto No's 21-27. Beethoven Piano Concertos No 1- No 5. Brahms Piano Concerto No 1 & 2. Schumann Piano Concerto. Grieg Piano Concerto. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1. Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3. Ravel Piano Concerto.

Wonderful performance, thank you for your range of musical interest! "No sheet music. Did he memorize the piece?" Yes - if you watch classical performances, for the most part, the conductor and orchestra will likely use sheet music in concert, but the soloists (whether playing against an orchestra or by themselves as here) almost never do.

Watch his arms and torso as he is filmed from the front, when you can't see the keys. It's just the smoothest gesticulation, but with magical music coming forth. Incredible!

Chopin c'est l'âme polonaise qui me fait voir des paysages enneigés, mais aussi des danses et des torrents pour revenir en douceur. C'est de la dentelle si délicate parfois que ça me donne la chair de poule. Ça restera ma préférence pour tout ça

I played this piece a couple years ago, but never even close to this level. The amount of control Zimerman has while seemingly exerting so little effort is just unreal to watch. No hand movement is unnecessary - it's all perfectly planned and practiced and so unbelievably efficient. And the voicing is incredible too. Consider that if each hand is playing multiple notes, you have to balance the volume not only between the hands, but between individual fingers, constantly. That's the true difficulty of mastering the piano, and Zimerman is one of the greatest of all time.

For a demonstration of some classical piano from an unusual source, watch "Lovebites - Swan Song [ + Chopin Intro ] (Five of a Kind, 21/02/2020) ". Lovebites is a Japanese all female metal group with 2 shredding guitarists, one of whom has also been studying classical piano since she was 3. She opens up this song she wrote with a Chopin etude before picking up her guitar.

Wonderful piece, great to hear it again after a long gap with such a dynamic performer. For a very different solo instrumental performance suggestion, why not listen to 'God Bless the Child', the Billie Holiday song, by jazz genius Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet. You wont be disappointed.

Love Chopin. If you've never heard his prelude in e minor, go listen to it now. You're welcome : )

Cool, I'd like to see Krystian go "face to face" with Rick Wakeman. That would be fun.

Interesting to hear this version. The one I've listened to the most is I think the ancient Arthur Rubenstein one (might be someone else, though). Interesting thing is how the pianist's interpretation can change the piece. We get used to "standard recordings" (with maybe a live recorded version where it was so loud that the singer couldn't hear himself to sing entirely in tune, but not much more). With classical music (and jazz - including the "pop" that seems to have gotten "cancelled" from the scope of "jazz" in recent times - in these years after the death of jazz, if you want to exaggerate) it's almost a requirement that this year's version of a piece must be different from last year's. (And the star in London must do it differently from the star in Chicago, so the proliferation is ... er ... prolific?) I liked it. This isn't that kind of "interesting". Chopin had a romantic relationship with author, George Sand. I was tempted to put that sentence trollishly up at "line #1", but didn't. Note that it's George, not Georges (and we're in France, now). He didn't have a relationship with George Elliot. (I wonder whether there's some relationship between the pen names of George Sand and George Elliot? It's not impossible.) She would apparently lie on the carpet under the piano when he played. (I think it was her piano, in her chateau.) The trolling being she was a female George. She lived in times where people wouldn't take a female author seriously, so she took the pen name George Sand (just like George Elliot used a man's name for her writing). I only found out that George is the feminine version of Georges a few minutes ago, from the Fount of All Knowledge. I suspect it might be fallible on this point. Anyway, try out a few more versions of the piece, for yourself, and you'll hear the range of emotions, and maybe also thoughts, that it can be made to express. I have this amateur, baseless theory that if a song's good enough you can perform it in a variety of ways. It's one of the things I take as evidence for how great Tim Smith (and so, Cardiacs, and other such friends) was/ were. There are now at least three versions of Stoneage Dinosaurs out there (one by no less than Steven Wilson - who loves Cardiacs), so maybe my little theory holds some water after all.

Great pianist. Up there with Richard Clayderman in my opinion.

thank you so much plz can your react to other ballades

Re: memorizing the music, it's no different from professional actors memorizing scripts, or heck, non-classical musicians playing 2-hour concerts without sheet music. Even piano learners at their childhood recitals have sheet music mostly to to allow them to finish, should the worst brain fart occur mid-piece. A professional pianist would/should have practiced their repertoire so much before the performance that it's honestly probably a mark against their professionalism if they couldn't play without the sheet music. (Just my 2 cents, spent a few years at the New England Conservatory in my misspent youth.)

Watch please Emil Gilels doing Rachmaninoff's G minor prelude (prelude #5) for great musically, expressiveness, passion, and control.

Zimerman is a piano jedi

Take a listen evgeny kissin BALLAD no 1 ...😢😢😢😢😢 u should react to it

All I got is a joke about you not saying anything about the lyrics. LUL Truthfully, I know little about Classical. I still love the genre despite my ignorance. Pleased you dare to cover it.

Like Tom Petty sang, "Stop Chopin my heart around." The pianist was very good but lacks the style of Chico Marx.

I prefer the Horovitz rendition at Carnagie Hall in 1965.