Sunday night at „Kongresowa” Hall attracted the audience with „Our Chopin Affair”, a new project by renowned fado singer, Mísia, follower of the great Amália Rodrigues. The playlist consisted of some well-known titles, such as Dumka, Etude in E major, Prelude in B major, Polonaise, Spring, Nocturne in C sharp minor and Marche funèbre (from the Piano Sonata No. 2). Of course those, and some other pieces as well, were supposedly drawn upon Chopin’s music. Chopin à la fado? Fado à la Chopin?
No, not at all. According to Mísia own words (“Beethoven Magazine” No. 6), these were not going to be Chopin’s works, “but music composed by my Argentinean collaborator, the pianist Daniel Schvetz, on the themes taken from […] great composer, and inspired by the climate of his works. I sense a similar feeling in his music […] to what is in fado […].” However there was no intention to arrange Chopin in the style of fado: “Absolutely not. We will not play ‘pure’ fado. There is no fado without Portuguese guitar and in the band I’m going to sing Chopin with, there will be none. Only the piano (Daniel Schvetz), electric guitar (Claudio Romano), violin (Luís Cunha) and audio art (Nives Widauer) [the ensemble was enhanced with bass guitar played by Múcio Sá]. We are trying to create a […] fusion: everything that can be translated from the musical Chopin into the language of fado without losing […] the emotional affectation”.
So there was neither Chopin to be played nor the fado…
...except for two moving moments, in the middle and at the end of the programme when Mísia sung pure fado songs anyway.

Krzysztof Komarnicki