Music of Chopin Hyperion Knight

• 1 I. Allegro maestoso 09:17
• 2 II. Scherzo: Molto vivace 02:43
• 3 III. Largo 07:58
• 4 IV. Finale: Presto, non tanto 05:07
• 5 Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52 11:34
• 6 Polonaise No. 5 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 44 11:41
• Total Runtime 48:20

Info for Music of Chopin

“Oh God, where art Thou? Art Thou there and dost Thou not avenge Thyself? Art Thou not sated with murder? Or art Thou indeed a Muscovite?” These words, written by Chopin after the fall of Warsaw to the Russians, seem as relevant to us in the latter part of the twentieth century as they did in 1831. Poland’s struggle for freedom and dignity strikes a common chord in all of humanity, and this perhaps best explains the continuing rise of Chopin’s popularity in an age which reviles romanticism. Friedrich Nietzsche spoke for many people of all nations when he was stirred to say: “I am too much of a Pole not to prefer Chopin’s music to all other music in the world.”

That Chopin’s music was the very essence of the Polish people seems evident in all of his works. The Warsaw press commented as early as 1830, when Chopin was but twenty years old, that: “Chopin knows what sounds are heard in our fields and woods; he has listened to the Polish village; he has made it his own.” Chopin himself wrote: “I should like only to write and leave for posterity the A B C of that which is truly Polish.”

Hyperion Knight, piano

Produced By: Wilson Audiophile Recordings, LLC Original Recording Engineer: David A. Wilson Project Manager: Daryl C. Wilson Analog to High Definition Digital Transfer: Bruce Brown, Puget Sound Studios Transfer Editing: Bruce Brown, Puget Sound Studios Sonic Evaluation: David A. Wilson, Sheryl Lee Wilson, Daryl C. Wilson

The recorded perspective of the piano in this recording is close... As though the 9' Hamburg Steinway is being played for you in your living room. Of course the actual recording was not made in a living room! Instead, the great room at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Ranch, with its incredibly low noise floor and fully adjustable acoustics, was used.

To capture a clean, dynamic, and harmonically rich instrumental presentation, a pair of Sennheiser MKH-20 Omni microphones were employed. The microphones' signals were amplified by two superb pure class-A microphone preamps custom-built for Wilson Audio by John Curl. MIT cable carried the balanced line level signal to Wilson Audio’s UltramasterTM 30 ips analog recorder. Subsequent digital master tapes were made through the Pygmy A/D converter on a Panasonic SV-3700. Playback reference monitoring was performed on Wilson Audio WATT II/Puppies, driven by a Spectral DMA-50 amplifier through MIT CVT Terminator cables.

Technical Notes:
Description of equipment and processes used for Master Tape transfers in Dave Wilson's Music Room:

Bruce Brown flew from Seattle to Provo to work hand-in-hand with Dave and Daryl Wilson. Each Master Tape was inspected, cleaned, and treated with Last #9 and #10 preservatives. All of the Master Tapes were baked to reformulate the binding. This was done in an incubator at 135 degrees and then they were left to cool back down to room temperature. All splices were inspected and repaired, if necessary.

Each transfer was executed on the UltraMaster, a one-of-a-kind Studer A80 designed and built by John Curl with Custom electronics.

Each Master Tape was stored by Wilson Audiophile “tails-out” in which Puget Sound Studios did a library wind to the take-up reel. All levels were set according to included EQ sheets and each 1KHz tone was further set at precisely 1KHz, via a custom Vari-speed adjustment. This provided the exact speed the Master Tapes were recorded at.

A total of five different Analog-to-Digital converters were used to provide samples for the Wilsons to evaluate. Ultimately an EMM Labs ADC-8 Mk IV, custom modified by Andreas Koch, was chosen by Dave and Daryl Wilson for the transfers from the UltraMaster using the original Master Tapes into a Sonoma DSD workstation for capture and editing. Monitoring from the Sonoma DSD workstation was routed though a modified Playback Designs MPS-5 via USB-X with Light Harmonic USB cable. All DSD files were transferred into a Merging Technologies Pyramix DSD/DXD Masscore workstation for sample rate conversion, format conversion, and meta-data tagging. The Pyramix Hepta filter was used for conversion to PCM. Files were then listened to for quality assurance.

Description of the Equipment used in the Provo, Utah “Wilson Music Room” that Wilson Audiophile Recordings, LLC put to use for Sonic Evaluation:

Speakers: Wilson Audio Alexandria XLF, two Thor’s Hammers
Electronics: Apple Mac Mini, Amarra & Audirvana Plus, Weiss int 202, Audio Research DAC8, VTL 7.5 mk3 Pre-Amp, VTL Siegfried mk2 amplifiers, 2 Wilson Audio W.A.T.C.H. Controllers
Cables: Audioquest Firewire, Transparent Opus

Hyperion Knight
is a pianist with a romantic touch. Known for the diversity of his repertoire, he is equally at home in serious classics and popular standards. Hyperion's recordings range from Beethoven to the Beatles, and in addition to regular appearances with orchestras across the United States he has been a featured entertainer at Manhattan’s Rainbow Room and Essex House. A Gershwin enthusiast, Hyperion has made recordings devoted to unique arrangements of Gershwin’s music, and frequently performs both Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F, most recently with the Santa Fe, Long Beach, Tennessee, St. Joseph, Greater Grand Forks, New Mexico and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras.

Other recent guest appearances include the Mozart Concerto #21 in C with the Utah Symphony, the Grieg Concerto with the Maui Pops Orchestra, and the Rachmaninoff Concerto #2 with the Kansas City Philharmonia and the Cleveland Philharmonic. Hyperion also makes frequent concert presentations on luxury cruise lines such as Silversea, Seabourn, Holland America and Celebrity. In 2013 he was given the honor of being named Silversea's "Entertainer of the Year".

Hyperion was born in Berkeley, California and graduated at age 19 from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. By the age of 22 he had received both a Master’s degree and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and he was awarded the Arthur Loesser Prize upon graduation. Hyperion now lives in New York where he studied with members of the Juilliard faculty and made his New York concerto debut playing the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto #1. Hyperion's teachers have included Paul Hersh, Eunice Podis, Paul Schenly and Jerome Lowenthal.

Hyperion has made a specialty of virtuoso piano transcriptions in the tradition of Liszt and Horowitz. His album Gershwin by Knight, a collection of Gershwin song transcriptions and the solo arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue, was given a glowing review in the pages of Stereophile, whose critic exclaimed “Hyperion Knight plays with marvelous verve and spectacular confidence. Notes are never fumbled or blurred, yet the performance has swing and drive.” The Sensible Sound called his Gershwin “nothing short of astonishing.” The Magnificent Steinway, his CD of romantic piano transcriptions on the Golden String label, was called "one of the most enjoyable CD's of recent years" by CD Review, and Fi Magazine described Hyperion as a “daredevil atop his gleaming, black-and-ivory silken-voiced machine. Bravissimo!” Hyperion is also an enthusiast for the great performers of the past, and as a recognized authority on historical recordings he has published numerous articles about the great pianists and conductors of the twentieth century.

Booklet for Music of Chopin