Irish composer, pianist and producer Sarah Powell, whose meditative In the Shadows EP from last December was one of the year’s unexpected pleasures, shares her elegiac rendition of Frédéric Chopin’s “Prelude in E Minor,” which until now has only been available on the vinyl version of that EP. The digital release also adds an immersive Dolby Atmos mix.
The press release quotes Power as saying, ”I never wanted to make a traditional cover of Chopin because there are already so many beautiful performances of this Prelude. Instead, I wanted to give it its own contemporary voice. I kept the original melody, but completely reimagined the harmony around it with original string arrangements by Gareth Quinn Redmond, immersive sound design and the warm character of a restored August Förster upright piano. It slowly became something entirely its own while still carrying the emotional weight of the original.”
“The more I learned about Chopin’s life,” she explains, “the more I found myself asking a simple question: if he were alive today, would he have the same freedom and opportunity to create the music that has survived for nearly two centuries? He wrote this Prelude while living in exile from Poland and later asked for it to be played at his own funeral. It left me wondering how many extraordinary artists we’re losing today through displacement and climate change – people who may never have the opportunity to create because they’re simply trying to survive.”
“Prelude” is a moving piece in any form, of course, but perhaps due to the hurdy-gurdy hullabaloo that has accented life these past few years, it somehow seems even more apropos now. Power’s rendition is deeply wistful and bittersweet, the epitome in some ways of the Portuguese notion of “saudade” or its German variant, “sehnsucht.”
The Old Grey Cat 