Eight months ago international concert pianist Phillip Dyson recorded tracks for his new CD celebrating Chopin’s music.
Now he is preparing to launch the album, Totally Chopin, and what better way to do it than at the place where it all began - St Mary’s Church, Ewell.
The end product is the result of almost three years work and planning.
“It has been a very big project,” he says. “Last year was Chopin’s bi-centenary, that took me to so many different countries and so many different concerts.
“There was always a plan to put something down for posterity, if you like, and that was to make a CD.”
Having spent months overseas, the idea of recording the album close to his home in Ewell appealed and St Mary’s, which is renowned for its acoustics, provided the perfect setting.
“We brought in a concert Steinway and closed the church for three days. Apart from the engineer at certain times shouting ‘plane’ it was absolutely perfect.”
Dyson will perform excerpts from the CD, including Chopin’s Grande Valse brillante, Fantasie-Impromptu, Military Polonaise, Revolutionary Study and Waltz in C sharp minor along with contemporary music by the likes of George Gershwin, Scott Joplin, Jerome Kern and Billy Mayerl, at a concert on Saturday.
“Chopin wrote almost exclusively for the piano. Over the last two to three years when I have been developing my Totally Chopin programmes, in a way I have been choosing my favourites. I have refined it a bit more for the CD - in a way it’s Chopin’s greatest hits.”
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