Classical reviews: Pete Seeger and Chopin

Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger  

Smithsonian Folkways SFW 40240  

★ ★ ★ ★★

Classical musicians who cross musical boundaries are all the rage these days, but no group can match the Kronos Quartet’s brilliant four-decade career spanning continents and musical worlds. Set up in San Francisco simply to play new music, this string quartet takes its Western-classical sound through an infinity of different local styles, as witness to its vast discography, in tandem with leading musicians from every tradition: Indian, Indonesian, Afghan, African, Japanese, Chinese, you name it. 

This CD may have its roots in Depression America since that was what fired the creative anger of Pete Seeger, but by roping in other musicians it ranges far and wide. Every track is in some way notable, but among the surprises are Kronos’s arrangement of a Hindu devotional hymn, and two anti-Fascist songs sung in Catalan by the Spanish singer Maria Arnal. Altogether superb.   

Louis Lortie Plays Chopin  

Louis Lortie, piano  

Chandos CHAN 20117  

★ ★ ★ ★★  

The French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie makes no fuss, but simply presses on as he has for the past three decades, releasing recordings, running his festival on Lake Como, and – Covid permitting – giving recitals. His Beethoven sonata cycle is one of the best in recent years, and his Chopin series – of which this CD is the sixth – is a constant source of pleasure. 

Here he intersperses some Mazurkas and Polonaises with Chopin’s Hommage a Mozart, in which the famous duet from Don Giovanni is turned into a virtuoso sequence of variations. Chopin was just 17 when he wrote it, prompting Robert Schumann to hail him as a genius. Lortie’s playing is magnificent – by turns refined, forceful, and gorgeously lyrical.