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A Ukrainian pianist has been filmed playing a final rendition of Chopin in the ruins of her house after it was badly damaged by Russian shelling. In a video recorded by her daughter, Iryna Manyukina is seen playing the piano in their home in Bila Tserkva, some 80 kilometers from Kyiv.

A concert marking the centenary of Poland's regained independence was due to be held at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles on Monday. American pianist Kate Liu was billed to perform a selection of works by Beethoven and Chopin as well as Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a virtuoso pianist and composer who was one of the architects of Polish independence a century ago. Diplomats, local officials and members of the area’s Polish community were expected to be among the audience for the event, which has been co-organised by the Polish National Foundation and the Polish Consulate General in Los Angeles. Polish senator...

The Mistake Waltz from the New York City Ballet Company.

Frédéric Chopin Hot news today, of sorts: a team of Spanish medial researchers think that Chopin may have been an epileptic. And perhaps he was. His early death at 39 has never been explained, and that he had serious health problems is obvious. Maybe, along with tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis, epilepsy is a contender. But without claiming the slightest medical expertise here, I’m not convinced by the medics’ argument that his recorded instances of apparent hallucination are proof of epileptic seizure. The traditional explanation for these time-out moments has usually to do with the hypersensitivity of a romantic soul; and...

Artistic genius may sometimes teeter on the brink of madness, but in the case of 19th-century romantic composer Frederic Chopin, some doctors have a more straightforward explanation: epilepsy. During his lifetime, Chopin's tendency to drift off while at the piano was interpreted by his partner George Sand as "the manifestation of a genius full of sentiment and expression." But in a new analysis published this week, Spanish doctors say Chopin's hallucinations may have been due to a temporal lobe epilepsy rather than the result of any sweeping artistic tendencies.

YOU know that a new year has truly arrived when critics stop issuing all those lists of the best films, books, plays, recordings and whatever of the year gone by. These lists seem to be popular with readers, and they stir up lively reactions. snip... Yet in other fields, critics and insiders think bigger. Film institutes periodically issue lists of the greatest films of all time. (“Citizen Kane” seems to have a lock on the top spot.) Rock magazines routinely tally the greatest albums ever. And think of professional tennis, with its system of rankings, telling you exactly which player...

In Poland, Chopin's music defines a nation By Bernard Osser (AFP) WARSAW — Tsarist Russia berated it as subversive, Nazi Germany banned it outright and to this day, for Poles, the cascading notes of Frederic Chopin still symbolise their country's long struggle for independence. After hearing Chopin's quintessentially Polish "Mazurkas" and his "Revolutionary Etude", Robert Schuman, a German and like Chopin a renowned 19th-century composer, understood, describing the music of his Franco-Polish contemporary as "cannons hidden among blossoms". Chopin wrote the powerful and turbulent "Revolutionary Etude" as an expat in his father's native France, where he landed after an 1830-31...

Burdened by ruinous health his entire life, Frederic Chopin often appeared like an apparition. But it is his music that is ghostlike. Two hundred years after his birth in 1810, more pianists and listeners than ever are chasing those ghosts, and loving every moment of it. "Chopin's music came out of nowhere," says pianist Byron Janis, born in McKeesport and one of the world's authorities on the great Polish composer. "There is nothing that preceded it. He was truly unique. With Beethoven, you can hear it came out of Mozart. Not with Chopin." Pauline Rovkah, head of the piano program...

I received a 30% off coupon for Borders that can be used today or tomorrow, and I've decided to get a CD of Chopin's polonaises, since I currently don't have anything with those pieces on it.