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Following universal praise for her EMI Classics debut album of Chopin piano works, Gilmore Artist Award winner Ingrid Fliter has recorded the composer’s complete waltzes for release as the music world prepares to celebrate his 200th birthday in 2010. The Mazurka No. 42 in F minor (Op. 63 No. 2), will be available as an exclusive iTunes bonus track. Ms. Fliter, the silver medal winner at the Frederic Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2000, names Chopin as the composer who speaks most clearly to her: “[His music] is like looking into a kaleidoscope of human life. He concentrates all his ideas, all his creative energy, in a very short space of time. He creates a whole world in each little piece.” “It wouldn't be an overstatement,” continues Ms. Fliter, “to say that if it had not been for Chopin's music I would not have been born. My mother noticed my father for the first time while he was playing some Chopin waltzes during a party! I have a vivid memory of being a child and of Chopin’s music, performed by Arthur Rubinstein, playing everywhere - in the living room, in the kitchen, in the car. So I grew up loving Chopin's music and accepting it as part of my everyday life. “One of the most difficult things to achieve while playing Chopin’s music is a good balance between his romantic soul and his classical expression. Through years of study, I have been touched to discover his darker side, his sense of the tragic, which plays a fundamental role in his music, as much as the ‘joie de vivre’ does. When I play Chopin, I have the feeling that the public reacts with a breath of satisfaction, saying ‘Ah, Chopin!’ What I hope every time I play this music is that I can keep the freshness.” Today Ingrid Fliter performs Chopin regularly, both in recital and with orchestra: “[Her] Chopin group was simply spellbinding. The music seemed to flow from her with an utterly natural lyrical impulse, graced with power, luminous delicacy and a spectrum of tonal coloring that combined to mark her out as one of the most instinctive and eloquent Chopin interpreters playing today.” (Daily Telegraph); “Yes, there was a rich sweetness to Fliter's playing … but plenty of fibre and muscle as well. Not for nothing has Fliter been compared to her great compatriot Martha Argerich: there's a similar vitality, an engaging restlessness that imbued some of Chopin's most dreamy sub-plots with enough snappiness and tang to keep us on our toes.” (The Times)