My first Chopin arrangements were written in Weimar in 1987. The music of the Romantic Polish master did not let me rest... some of his pieces seemed to me as if they could have been composed for guitar. The sound of some works is so close to the character of the guitar -- almost as if they were calling for a guitarist to attempt to play them! The arrangements of the three waltzes thus came into being.
Eleven years passed until, with the encouragement of the director of the Polish publisher ”Professional Music Press”, Mr. Jan Poplawski, I again leafed through the complete edition. My selection here is subjective: on this disk you can hear the works that I liked and which I could arrange while retaining their most important musical characteristics. Many pieces are missing that I would have liked to have recorded -- maybe next time.

To complete an arrangement is a very interesting process. A known work can reveal new facets, perhaps we can also discover previously unknown qualities. The same -- and yet not the same. While the structure and character of a piece are retained, the music reaches the listener through the timbres of another instrument. Sometimes one can also hear pieces which are seldom played, such as the fugue or contredanse on this recording.

I hope that these arrangements of known works will give the listener as much pleasure as I received while interpreting them.

József Eötvös (translated by Travis Lehtonen)

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