Music/Electro/Classical Music A very particular melancholy inhabits the piano works of Frédéric Chopin. Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and German-Japanese star pianist Alice Sara Ott take up an entirely new approach to the Polish composer: using recordings of out of tune pianos from Reykjavik bars underlaid with synthesizers, the duo present an attack on “pure” sound. “Chopin himself would play his nocturnes in bars. They weren’t quiet places like today’s concert halls,” says Arnalds. The result of this undogmatic strategy is not a chic, lounge-style Chopin but one in light vintage clothing that captures the poetry of his remarkable romantic feeling for life and suffering in a way that is both touching and lightly effervescent.