Chopin Etude Op. 25 No. 1 "Aeolian Harp"

Played by Yukio Yokoyama. ClassicsForTheAges brings you another lost performance! This complete set of Chopin's etudes was released in 1996, several years after Yokoyama recorded it. Why Sony sat on it for so many years is a mystery, but if that is any indicator of their opinion, you can expect that these performances will remain out of circulation.

Yukio Yokoyama's career took off after he won third prize at the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition. Other than this set of Etudes, he has released very few recordings - the most well-known among them, as far as I can tell, is a set of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, also out of circulation.

This etude is sometimes called "Aeolian Harp", a nickname coined by Robert Schumann, who found its melody "wondrous", as well as "The Shepherd Boy," for Chopin's advice to a pupil to picture a shepherd boy refuging in a grotto to avoid a storm playing the melody on his flute. This work consists entirely of rapid arpeggios and harmonic modulations based on A-flat major.

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