Chopin

Nine time Grammy-nominated Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes' new solo piano album, Chopin: Ballades & Nocturnes, intersperses the Romantic master composer's four Ballades works immense in the range and power of their expression with three of his nocturnes, and represents his first recording of Chopin's music in more than a decade. On the new album, Andsnes performs all four Ballades: No. 1 in G minor, a work known, as he puts it, for one of "the most haunting melodies in the whole of piano literature"; No. 2 in F, which is dedicated to Schumann and captures the two extremes of the composer's personality; the gentle and elusive No. 3 in A-flat; and No. 4 in F minor, which Andsnes considers Chopin s "most complex masterpiece," and has only recently started performing in public.