Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 2 | Yulianna Avdeeva | Marie Jacquot | WDR Symphony Orchestra

Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 2 | Yulianna Avdeeva | Marie Jacquot | WDR Symphony Orchestra
蕭邦 - 第二號鋼琴協奏曲 | 尤麗安娜·阿芙傑耶娃 | 瑪麗·雅克 | 西德廣播交響樂團

62,795 views Premiered Oct 25, 2026 KÖLNER PHILHARMONIE
Piano soloist Yulianna Avdeeva performs Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, with the WDR Sinfonieorchester under the baton of its principal conductor, Marie Jacquot. Recorded live on September 18, 2026, at the Cologne Philharmonie.

Frédéric Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21

00:00:00 I. Maestoso
00:15:22 II. Larghetto
00:24:46 III. Allegro vivace

Yulianna Avdeeva, piano
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Marie Jacquot, conductor

Program Notes:

In July 1829, Frédéric Chopin, then just 19 years old, completed his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory. His composition teacher, Józef Elsner, praised the graduate as a “remarkable talent and musical genius.” The Polish-French child prodigy had largely taught himself to play the piano. During his final year at the conservatory, Frédéric met the voice student Konstancja Gładkowska and fell in love with her. “Perhaps to my misfortune,” he wrote to a friend in October 1829, “I have met my ideal and served her faithfully for six months without speaking to her of my feelings. I dream of her; she inspired the adagio of my concerto.” He is referring to the Concerto in F minor, chronologically Chopin’s first piano concerto, which was nevertheless numbered No. 2 because it was not printed until after his Concerto in E minor. Chopin’s few compositions with an orchestral part were all written during his youth in Poland, before he made Paris his home in 1831 and composed exclusively for solo piano. Unlike Beethoven’s dialogic dramas between soloist and orchestra, Chopin wrote Romantic virtuoso concertos in which the poetry of the piano is framed by the orchestra. The first movement begins with an extended orchestral exposition that ends in a fading pianissimo, thus providing the soloist with a dramatic entrance for dazzling piano brilliance. In a letter, Chopin wrote about the Larghetto (also: Adagio): “It is meant to convey the impression of someone gazing gently at a place that evokes a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.” In the final movement, Polish folk dance motifs unfold into the highest level of pianistic virtuosity.
The F-minor Concerto was premiered on February 7, 1830, first in the Chopin family’s salon with a small orchestra conducted by Karol Kurpinski. The public premiere did not take place until March 17 at the National Theater in Warsaw—with Frédéric Chopin at the piano, of course. (Text: Christian Lehmann)

Film Provided by ARD Klassik