Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Scherzo in Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
Jerzy Żurawlew (1886-1980), piano
Recorded in the 1950s
Caricature of Chopin by Józef Szymon Kurowski (1809-1851)
Jerzy Żurawlew was born in Rostov-on-Don to a Russian father and a Polish mother. Among his teachers was Aleksander Michałowski. He founded the Warsaw International Chopin Piano Competition in 1927. One of the main reasons he did so was to rehabilitate Chopin’s music, because at that time, there was a reconsideration of the Romantic era in general – and Chopin’s image as a national hero was subject to serious skepticism. Now, about 100 years later, this is hard to fathom…Chopin and his music are more popular than ever, worldwide!
