[respox]

Hi!
Great to see people play the paraphrase! While I would agree with you that a calm and serene piece that is beautiful is more artistically attractive than a brute piece that is brute just to be brute, I think that it's exactly because of that that the concert paraphrase lacks something. The simple harmonies and simplicity make the Dearly Beloved arrangement in the PC very touching and nice, but when they get bloated with simple technical means (which are very hard to play nevertheless), it just doesn't feel right. While I love the Paraphrase, I have the impression that something is 'missing' in there, I would have loved to see some musical complexity. It's the same technical measures up and down and just moved by one note and then a a few notes further down, and you won't find something like this in Chopin I believe. It's sad and that's why I am looking forward to the second collection and would love to see some development in this area. (Many other of the PC arrangements have the same problem IMHO - being pianistically bloated, sounding much more difficult than the actual challenge, and being quite repetitive - but that doesn't neccessarily have to be something bad in every respect)

GermanSeabass' version, although sounding very similar, is essentially something else, as it tones down the difficulty because it is something like a "simplified version" in many passages if you want - while being a great transcription achievement given the time frame, and having some distinct and beautiful timbres in his own recording (of which I wished the official paraphrase had them). But if you want to learn the piece, go with the official score; while it is definitely much more difficult, actually knowing which notes to play and thus seeing and understanding the patterns makes it also somewhat easier and more manageable imho.