Chopin's Piano Concerto No.2

Frederic Chopin took the piano and transformed it into the ultimate vehicle for the Romantic imagination. But there’s a burning fire beneath the poetry of his music: or as one contemporary put it ‘cannons hidden in flowers’. In the hands of Vasily Petrenko and Bruce Liu – winner of the 2021 International Chopin Competition – his Second Piano Concerto will blaze as never before: a passionate counterpart to two classics from 1940s America. Both Korngold and Bartók fled from fascism to the New World, and Korngold’s swashbuckling film score is practically a hymn to freedom. Bartók’s spectacular Concerto for Orchestra, meanwhile, is more than just a multicoloured showcase for a great orchestra at the top of its game. It’s a struggle between darkness and light, crowned by a mighty shout of joy.