The debut album from Chelsea Guo was featured in last week's list of Essential New Albums. A prize-winner at the 2020 Chopin Piano Competition, her Orchid Classics recording is appropriately devoted to the composer's music, including his Op 28 Preludes (recorded on a 1876 Steinway built by Theodore Steinway, son of Henry Steinway who founded the famed piano makers).

It also, however, features three tracks in which Guo both plays and sings - including ‘In mir klingt ein Lied', a beautiful setting of the melody from the first part of Chopin's Op 10 No 3 Etude, to words by Ernst Marischka.

'To be able to sing the melody Chopin considered to be his own favourite among all those he ever composed, feels like a very special privilege,' writes Chelsea Guo. 'Chopin is known for the vocal quality of his piano music, and singing it with real text, rather than as a vocalise, while playing this beautiful third etude brought me a great deal of insight into what Chopin might have envisioned as he was composing.

'While singing and playing simultaneously poses various challenges, mainly that of needing to maintain a split focus, I find that the contact of my fingers to the keys actually provides support for my voice, and of course, the vocal line guides the pianistic element. It can sometimes feel difficult or awkward, but Chopin was ingenious in the way he composed this particular piece to feel so incredibly natural.'

Chopin: In My Voice is available now from Orchid Classics - you can explore the album on Apple Music below.

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