The excellent wife and I are taking a class at the Princeton Adult School on the music of Chopin. He's not my favorite composer: he wrote mostly for piano, as opposed to other instruments or ensembles, and, in general, the Romantics are not the guys for me.
We did a unit on the Etudes, "studies" in particular musical or pianistic techniques. I've got to give it to Chopin: they aren't just didactic (although they are that), they are real music.
I was taken with this one (if it won't open, try this Wikipedia page; it's the Donald Betts version of number 2). I've saved the file to one of my computers, and reformatted it as an .mp3 (that link that might not work is an ogg-vorbis open-source format that may not play on proprietary operating systems; sorry).
I keep coming back to that piece. I can't stop playing it. It's not his greatest, but it has completely arrested me.
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