Yundi is the pianist who used to be known as Yundi Li. Lately, he has made a bid to become the best-known one-named pianist since Solomon (the great British pianist, born Solomon Cutner, who lived from 1902 to 1988). Or maybe I should say Liberace?

Yundi was born in China in 1982. Eighteen years later, he won the Chopin competition in Warsaw, becoming the youngest person ever to do so. Since then, he has been known particularly for his playing of Chopin.

He has now recorded the Preludes, which is to say, the twenty-four preludes classified as Op. 28. Chopin completed two others. Yundi appends those as bonuses.

Chopin wrote his famous twenty-four in the late 1830s. There is one prelude in each of the twenty-four keys (twelve major and twelve minor). Unlike Bach, Chopin did not write fugues—just the preludes. More than a century later, Shostakovich, following Bach, would write both preludes and fugues.

Chopin’s preludes are, among other things, brief. Putting it differently, they are marvels of brevity. Almost all of them last under two minutes. Many last under a minute. There is one long one—or “long” one—lasting almost five minutes. This is the beauty in D-flat major, nicknamed the “Raindrop.”

As longtime readers know, I’m forever complaining about the completeness craze (as I call it). People think, mistakenly, that they have to play all of a category. There is no reason—none—to play all four of Chopin’s Scherzos in a row. And there is good reason not to. There is no reason—none—to play all four of Chopin’s Ballades.

But how about the Preludes? Are they a set? Frankly, they work both as individual pieces, or pieces to be played in clusters, and as a complete set. But people are afraid to play just a few of something now. They fear that musicologists or critics will jump down their throats.

Chopin’s first prelude, the one in C major, is both a wonderful piece on its own and a wonderful opener. This composer knew what he was doing. The C-major is a piece for which the word “gladsome” was invented. How does Yundi play it? Pretty well, though there is a certain tension, a certain over-muscularity.

Let me assure you that I will not critique all twenty-four tracks (or twenty-six, counting the bonuses). But I will make some generalities (and add some more specifics to boot).

Yundi is most successful, I think, when the preludes are fast, rippling, and virtuosic. He is less successful when they are slow and songful. Now and then, I can virtually see the hammers go up and down. That is, Yundi could use greater legato, a better sense of cantabile. There is a certain tightness in his playing, which does Chopin no favors.

Take the Prelude in B minor. It should really melt—but does not quite do so in these hands.

Tempo is important in these pieces, and Yundi has an admirable sense of it. The Prelude in E minor, for example, is thankfully not too slow. It is marked Largo, but it must move. And it still has its poignancy at a moving tempo.

What about the Prelude in C minor, that fat, stout, chordy thing? Yundi plays it with due fatness and stoutness. But he pounds just a little. How about the “Raindrop”? It’s not simple enough for me; it is a little on the fussy side. Also, it’s not glassy enough for me; it’s a little on the choppy side. This prelude should entrance, and it does not, or at least it didn’t for me on first hearing.

We are in the realm of the subjective. And let me say that Yundi always plays creditably, and you will want to judge for yourself (although you are kind to take my word for it).

This is a short album, at just under thirty-nine minutes. I used to think of CDs as lasting about an hour and twenty minutes. Is this new CD a rip-off? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know whether many people buy CDs anymore. We live in a world of downloads and whatnot. To people under thirty, is a CD like an LP?

One thing this new CD did was make me appreciate the Chopin Preludes anew. They are ingenious pieces. When I was a kid, I loved Chopin. Then I went through a period of snobby anti-Romanticism. These days, I appreciate Chopin’s genius more than ever.

I looked up what Wikipedia has to say about the twenty-four Preludes, and read a quotation by Henry Finck, an American music critic who lived from 1854 to 1926. “If all piano music in the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote should be cast for Chopin’s Preludes.”

Wow. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I understand.

 

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