January 28, 2010 - 13:28 AMT
Pianist Vazgen Vartanian to perform at Chopin’s 200th anniversary concert


On February 18, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory will host pianist Vazgen Vartanian’s concert.

Concert program features 4 ballads and 4 scherzo’s authored by great polish composer <b>Frederic Chopin</b>. With his Moscow’s performance, the pianist will start a world tour covering cities in Russia, CIS, Europe and US.

Vazgen Vartanian was born in Moscow, graduated from Moscow state conservatory and received Master of Fine Arts Degree in US. The pianist presented extensive repertoire of great compositions at his concerts in Germany, Italy, Switzerland as well as Poland, Hungary, Czechia and other European states.

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music. Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother. He was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. On 2 November 1830, at the age of twenty, he left Warsaw for Austria, intending to go on to Italy. The outbreak of the Polish November Uprising seven days later, and its subsequent suppression by Russia, led to Chopin's becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration.

In Paris, Chopin made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. Though an ardent Polish patriot, in France he used the French versions of his given names and in 1835, possibly to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents, became a French citizen. After some ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French novelist, Aurore Dupin, better known by her pseudonym, George Sand. For the greater part of his life Chopin suffered from poor health and he died in Paris in 1849, aged thirty-nine, from pulmonary tuberculosis.

Chopin's compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. Though they are technically demanding, the emphasis in his style is on nuance and expressive depth rather than sheer virtuosity. Chopin invented musical forms such as the instrumental ballade and was responsible for major innovations in the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.