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the composer of the day
Feb. 22nd, 2010 11:46 am... is Frédéric Chopin, because this is the 200th anniversary of his nativity. (Chopin himself thought he was born on March 1st, but the weight of evidence seems to favor February 22nd. Besides, if we celebrate it now first, we can do so again next week.)
Chopin occupies a distinctive place in the pantheon of famous composers, one well illustrated by his role in one of my favorite silly CDs, The Idiot's Guide to Classical Music, a collection of snippets of 99 famous tunes by 55 composers. (Put it on random play and it makes a great guessing game for one's friends.) Most of the music is orchestral or arranged for orchestra. There's no chamber music, and only six works for solo piano (and about as many with chorus). Two of those six are among the five selections by Beethoven, and another from the five by Mozart. The other three are the ones by Chopin.
Chopin didn't write only solo piano music, and other composers were as prolific and accomplished at the keyboard as he, but no other noted composer focused so close to exclusively on the piano. His music can be grand and heroic, but what tends to predominate is a subtle wash of sound, and this has made for a great variety of approaches in exactly how to play it. Chopin himself is reported to have played quietly and with hesitation, favoring tiny salons over concert halls as a venue.
Others have followed this, and for a long time I found Chopin's music wispy and insubstantial, even in the loud parts, with nothing I could grab on to. My conversion began with a college piano recital some years ago including Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31. I was taken with the straightforward, "play it as written" approach of the pianist, without exaggerated rubato and breaking of lines. Since then, it's become my favorite Chopin work, and indeed it seemed to be following me around for a while: I kept coming across it on unexpected occasions, most notably when Garrick Ohlsson played it as an unannounced encore after a concerto. There's a little upward cascade in the trio section which is printed in the score with tiny noteheads. Ohlsson actually made it sound that way: tiny pillowy things which almost literally vanished in his hands, an astonishing effect I've never heard reproduced by anyone else, though this performance, the most "sensitive" one I found on YouTube, comes closest. (The cascade I'm referring to appears for the first time starting at 3:53.) By contrast, this performance is the most straightforward I found, the most like the one that clicked for me at that college recital. (And don't you just love this guy's outfit for playing Chopin in?)
Chopin was born in Poland in the days of its partition among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and he was a dedicated nationalist. Descriptions like the above, though, make him sound rather French, and indeed he was that too. His father had emigrated from France, thus his French surname, and he left Warsaw at an early age and spent most of the rest of his life in Paris, thus the customary French version of his forename. Other Slavic peoples tend to write music that stomps around heavily, and Chopin is not like that at all. But actually his music is very Polish, as I realized when I first heard the impressionistic work of one of his most distinguished Polish successors, Karol Szymanowski. So I moved my Chopin records out of the French section of my collection, where I'd been whimsically keeping them, and back among the Slavs.
Chopin has appeared as a character in several films, of which the most curious is a 1991 film called Impromptu about the artistic salon life in Paris, in which he is played by a young Hugh Grant, a casting notion that takes some getting used to. And yes, as depicted Chopin really did play four-hand Beethoven symphony arrangements with Franz Liszt (played by Julian Sands). Chopin took the bass, to ensure that Liszt wouldn't drown him out.
He died at 39 of chronic tuberculosis that had already wiped out most of his music-making for the previous few years.
Chopin occupies a distinctive place in the pantheon of famous composers, one well illustrated by his role in one of my favorite silly CDs, The Idiot's Guide to Classical Music, a collection of snippets of 99 famous tunes by 55 composers. (Put it on random play and it makes a great guessing game for one's friends.) Most of the music is orchestral or arranged for orchestra. There's no chamber music, and only six works for solo piano (and about as many with chorus). Two of those six are among the five selections by Beethoven, and another from the five by Mozart. The other three are the ones by Chopin.
Chopin didn't write only solo piano music, and other composers were as prolific and accomplished at the keyboard as he, but no other noted composer focused so close to exclusively on the piano. His music can be grand and heroic, but what tends to predominate is a subtle wash of sound, and this has made for a great variety of approaches in exactly how to play it. Chopin himself is reported to have played quietly and with hesitation, favoring tiny salons over concert halls as a venue.
Others have followed this, and for a long time I found Chopin's music wispy and insubstantial, even in the loud parts, with nothing I could grab on to. My conversion began with a college piano recital some years ago including Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31. I was taken with the straightforward, "play it as written" approach of the pianist, without exaggerated rubato and breaking of lines. Since then, it's become my favorite Chopin work, and indeed it seemed to be following me around for a while: I kept coming across it on unexpected occasions, most notably when Garrick Ohlsson played it as an unannounced encore after a concerto. There's a little upward cascade in the trio section which is printed in the score with tiny noteheads. Ohlsson actually made it sound that way: tiny pillowy things which almost literally vanished in his hands, an astonishing effect I've never heard reproduced by anyone else, though this performance, the most "sensitive" one I found on YouTube, comes closest. (The cascade I'm referring to appears for the first time starting at 3:53.) By contrast, this performance is the most straightforward I found, the most like the one that clicked for me at that college recital. (And don't you just love this guy's outfit for playing Chopin in?)
Chopin was born in Poland in the days of its partition among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and he was a dedicated nationalist. Descriptions like the above, though, make him sound rather French, and indeed he was that too. His father had emigrated from France, thus his French surname, and he left Warsaw at an early age and spent most of the rest of his life in Paris, thus the customary French version of his forename. Other Slavic peoples tend to write music that stomps around heavily, and Chopin is not like that at all. But actually his music is very Polish, as I realized when I first heard the impressionistic work of one of his most distinguished Polish successors, Karol Szymanowski. So I moved my Chopin records out of the French section of my collection, where I'd been whimsically keeping them, and back among the Slavs.
Chopin has appeared as a character in several films, of which the most curious is a 1991 film called Impromptu about the artistic salon life in Paris, in which he is played by a young Hugh Grant, a casting notion that takes some getting used to. And yes, as depicted Chopin really did play four-hand Beethoven symphony arrangements with Franz Liszt (played by Julian Sands). Chopin took the bass, to ensure that Liszt wouldn't drown him out.
He died at 39 of chronic tuberculosis that had already wiped out most of his music-making for the previous few years.
