U-M Chopin Project

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when the composer was between seven and eighteen years old, Britton Recital Hall overflowed its 250-seat capacity, with folks standing at the back and outside in the corridor. Chopin is far and away the most popular composer of Romantic piano music in history — and besides, it was free, and the audience knew what to expect.

At a bare minimum, they can expect, over the course of nine concerts, performances of every single solo piano work Chopin ever wrote, in chronological order. The good stuff — works from Chopin's late teens — started late in the second concert, and the really good stuff kicked in during the third concert, with works from his early twenties.

Whether the music itself is early, late, or middle, an audience can also expect the format to remain essentially the same. The Chopin Project was undertaken by the pianists in the studio of Arthur Greene, and performances by the students are interspersed with performances by the master. In the first half of the opening concert, for example, Greene played the opening works — a pair of polonaises in G minor and B-flat major; the closing works — three ecossaises, two mazurkas (in G major and B-flat major), and a rondo in C minor; and the central work — the Introduction and Variations on "Der Schweizerbub." Two of his students played the flanking works: Dmitri Vorobiev took on the Polonaises in A-flat Major and G-sharp Minor, while Christina Thayer tore into the Polonaise in B-flat Minor.