“Chopin transformed piano-writing. No-one else wrote music of this colour. Who else made the piano sing like him? … He created a new world from his instrument, a cosmos of his own, so even though Chopin wrote no symphony or opera, it does not feel as though there is anything missing from his oeuvre.” 

These are the words of the Argentinean pianist Nelson Goerner, whose Chopin playing has prompted Gramophone to describe him as ”a player of exalted poetic verve”, and whose concert at Wigmore Hall in October 2009 was one of a series he gave around the world to celebrate the composer’s bicentenary in 2010. 

This programme opens with Chopin’s last large-scale work, the Polonaise-Fantaisie and the final two nocturnes follow. Goerner then ended the first part of his Wigmore Hall recital with the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise in E flat major. 

The second half of Goerner’s recital comprised the 12 Études, which date from around the same time as the Grande Polonaise. They are, he believes: “the best teachers you can have. You feel like a student every time you play them; you find new things each time and with an increased sense of physical freedom … These works require a particular state of mind and spirit, they are not just acrobatic exercises.”