What a marvel this streaming is ! I was not expecting to be invited into such an intimate atmosphere where there was just a magnificent pianist playing Chopin’s piano ( an Erard of 1838 ) in the house where Chopin was born. An ideal situation for a historic instrument , which is lost when brought into the modern day concert hall, but in this intimate atmosphere becomes the very voice of Chopin. Sounds that he would have known and loved as he pioneered a completely new way of using a keyboard instrument with a pedals .It was Anton Rubinstein who had said that the pedals were the soul of the piano and it was the genius of Chopin who could create such a revolutionary new world on the evolving keyboard instruments of his time.Schumann was the first to notice when an eighteen year old pole presented himself in Paris with his own composition op 2 :”Hats off Gentlemen,a Genius !”.

I have heard Martin play before in Cremona when he was invited to give an equally short recital in the Fazioli Concert Hall that transfers to Cremona for three days every year.Very fine performances of Chopin there too,including the Chopin 3rd Sonata op 58, but I was not prepared for what I was to hear today as I watched and listened to this live stream and realised that we were in the presence a great interpreter.

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A director of photography too with a rather more refined fantasy than Walt Disney who chose just the right moments to give us glimpses of the marvels that surrounded Chopin in his youth and which was to torment him all his short life exiled from such simplicity and beauty.

Martin looking ever more like his mentor Jerome Rose who I had heard in London when I was a schoolboy .Jerome was winner of the Busoni Competition in Bolzano and invited to play the Tchaikowsky Concerto in the Sunday evenings dedicated by Victor Hochauser to the violin and piano concerti and Romeo and Juliet overture. It would invariably finish with the 1812 overture with the canon effects reverberating around the vast space of the Royal Albert Hall .Little could I have imagined that I would invite Jerome to play in my own Euromusica concert season in Rome in 2002 and invite him to dine with us at home with my Italian actress wife Ileana Ghione.I still remember his performance of the great A major Sonata by Schubert ,and the reason I mention it is because of the same limpet type fingers that I saw today from the superb close ups on Martin’s hands.

Martin’s performances were with just the shadow of Chopin looking on ( and of course the recording crew one of whom gallantly applauded at the end) .This was a pianist creating,in such intimacy, the same magic that Chopin himself would have created in the noble salons he was to frequent as a teenager in Paris.But today it was just a piano that Chopin would have known ( I do not know if it had actually belonged to Chopin) and a pianist who allowed himself to be totally immersed in the music without any care of personal appearances with grimacing, grunting and singing alla Glenn Gould. It was we that were trespassing on such intimate confessions – if only Chopin had had the same technology as today ! Here taking away the pressure of performance before an audience we were treated to performances of some of the greatest masterworks of Chopin that were some of the finest I have ever heard.A total dedication to the music with an aristocratic sense of style and taste that did not preclude a hypnotic personal interpretation of overwhelming authority and beauty.

The Polonaise op 44 opened this short concert and immediately we were immersed into a sound world with a very particular soul, like looking at a Daguerreotype photo ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype) of which just one famously was taken of Chopin.But there was nothing dated or brown around the edges about this performance as it was very expressive and beautifully rhapsodic with restrained passion. Martin’s limpet like fingers could make the octaves sing with such beauty of legato and shape with a supreme sense of style.He brought an extraordinary architectural shape to the central transition dissolving so naturally into the beautiful central Mazurka.The final eruptions that lead back into the polonaise were like thunderbolts played with fearless abandon .The final coda I always have Stefan Askenase in my mind but today there was the same nobility and delicacy but also an extraordinary clarity .This was the performance of a true artist who had seen this work as a great tone poem and had lived every moment of it with mastery and poetic vision.

The Barcarolle is one of the greatest of works for the piano where there is a continual outpouring of mellifluous beauty reaching heights of the sublime. There was a beautiful fluidity from the very first notes and it is hardly surprising that the director of photography discreetly showed us the brook that bubbles through Chopin’s garden.There was even a frog looking on with such marvels in his eyes with leaves being reflected in the water.Nothing could deflect from the refined beauty and poetry of the playing though.The overhead camera allowed us to appreciated the delicate continuous circular movement of his left hand as the barcarolle continued on it’s way with ravishing beauty.Sublime heights were reached with Chopin’s indication ‘dolce sfogato’ revealed with playing of rare sensitivy in a passage that Perlemuter would exclaim ‘we have arrived in heaven’. Martin picking up the tempo towards the end that gave great shape of joy and exultation and a point of arrival from which he could dissolve as the music gradually disintegrates with veiled beauty before our astonished eyes.

Four Preludes from op 28 were played with such beguiling mastery that I look forward in the future to hearing all 24 from such a master.

Op 28 n. 13 is one of the most beautiful of this box of jewels and it was the left hand that was played unusually expressively revealing the ravishing beauty of the melody that sits above this weaving wave of notes.

Op 28 n. 3 was a wash of sounds flooding the melodic line that was played with simplicity and clarity.

Digging deep into the sombre bass notes of n. 2 with the imperious melody played with just one finger projecting sounds of aristocratic, chiselled nobility.

There was a dark brooding to n. 14 which prepared us for the extraordinary last movement of the sonata that was to follow.

A masterly performance of the B flat minor Sonata op 35 which must truly be one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.Aristocratic nobility and clarity were mixed with luminosity and poetic mastery. A scrupulous attention to Chopin’s very precise markings had me scurrying to the score too see if the two chords before the second subject were indeed staccato! Adding the much debated repeat by going back to the ‘Grave’ introduction and not just the ‘Doppio movimento’ as tradition has dictated ,showed a true thinking musician at the service of the composer.A beautifully artistic scherzo ,not the usual rhythmic exercise but shaped with the same wonderful sound that was to pervade the whole of this recital.The ‘più lento’ I never thought I would hear as beautifully played as I remember from Rubinstein – today in Martin’s hands I was reminded of the sentiment without sentimentality of Rubinstein as was the frog linked in the same frame as the pianist in this live stream by a director of photography equally blessed by the Gods today. There was a gentle but relentless throbbing to the funeral march with the poignancy of the melodic line floated above it as it preceded with heart rending inevitability.I had never noticed the deep bass just before the entry of the Trio until today and again went scurrying to the score as I usually only do with artists of the calibre of Murray Perahia who like Martin really look deeply into the score to find the real meaning of the composer ,transmitting it with humility,intelligence and poetic sensibility.The last movement was exactly as it has been described as the wind wailing over the graves.No pointing of melody but again scrupulous attention to Chopin’s wishes.

The sound of a single soul clapping at the end of such marvels seemed rather hollow but by some miracle these performances were recorded and will go down in history side by side with the greatest interpreters of the Genius of Chopin