Frédéric Chopin

1810-1849

Saturday, March 25, 2000

It took me many years to even contemplate a serious study of this composer. Yes, I had played through a few things by him, études and mazurkas, but somehow his style seemed foreign to my own range of emotional sensibilities. Countless numbers of people over the years asked me if I knew anything by Chopin and I would proffer something by someone else, usually a German composer like Bach or Beethoven, perhaps Schubert or later Brahms. I'd always respected Chopin and those who managed to play his music, but had pretty much determined not to attempt playing him in public as I was fairly sure that I would not be able to do him proper justice. But how on earth can one consider oneself a pianist without playing any Chopin? After all he was and still is the composer most closely associated with the piano. It was high time to make a serious attempt.

For the uninitiated, what I was not prepared for is how very different Chopin's pianistic style really is from that required by the German school. What is it? Is it Polish? Well, only the mazurkas and polanaises have any really direct "Polish" flavor in them. The rest might even be considered French. In fact I always thought of Chopin as an essentially French composer as much as a Polish nationalist composer. How much "system" there is in those études or preludes? Those who really have any sense of the French character know how deeply involved with "system" they really are. Of course that's only one side of them. The other side is romance. There are so very many French composers whose works derive directly from Chopin's tonal pallet. But then of course Chopin's music had a tremendous influence on Liszt as well as many others in the romantic movement.

Vladimir Horowitz used to say that one should approach playing Chopin as if it was Mozart and Mozart as if it was Chopin. What did he mean? What does it mean to play anything as if it was Chopin? What clues could I obtain from the music itself?

I decided to begin my study of Chopin with pieces that I could play without too much technical burden, so as first to "get" his style and then move from these into more demanding pieces. I also began digging out all my recordings, not many, of Chopin's works and giving them a careful listening. I bought many more as well.

According to legend, Chopin himself was not pleased with an over emotionalized or "schmaltzy" rendering of his own works. I wondered what happens if one just plays the music, holding the tempo steady, almost trying to play it bloodlessly cold? I can usually do this with any other composer, especially Bach. But I found out that I couldn't do this with any Chopin! How strange! Something in the music itself conveys a distinct emotional warmth, heat or even occasionally something like an electric spark or shock. This was the first revelation. There were to be more.

Nocturne Op. 32 #1

All of the nocturnes are long since in the standard repertoire. In fact one reason why all of Chopin is in the standard repertoire is that there just simply isn't that much of it. He didn't live very long and anyway was just not as prolific as some other composers. One can own all of his music and carry it under one arm. Anyway, I chose to learn this piece because it seemed technically simple and I was intrigued by its ending which makes a complete break with the rest of the piece.

A lot of Chopin looks deceptively easy on paper. After one learns all the notes, the work has just begun. The one word that would describe how this piece must be played is "refined" and indeed Chopin is, as Cyril Scott describes him, the composer of refinement par excellance. There seems to be a narrow range of acceptable tempi and volume. If one exceeds these parameters the music sounds really weird, as if it's a parody of itself or badly out of focus.

One plays most of this piece no louder than piano and sostenuto which means smoothly and sustained, an appellation applied also to the 1st movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. The various little turns and expressions are played smoothly and quietly. A lot of "playing from the elbow" articulating the melody apart from the rest is essential in bringing the music out; making it sound like Chopin. There's also far less room for "letting the music play itself" as in Bach or even Beethoven. Chopin demands a conscious effort on the part of the performer to "be there" during every note, every phrase, or something can go horribly wrong. And there doesn't seem to be anything sounding nearly as bad as a mistake in a piece by Chopin. Some other composers are a bit more forgiving with mistakes, but not Chopin.

There are places in this nocturne that remind me of music written even in modern times. The choices of simple chord voicings are as if they were written by a Gershwin or Mancini. The mystique of this composer is in these nuances as much as say a great painter's is in his brush strokes. The analogy is apt.

The end of this nocturne is a kind of "call to arms" interrupting the lovely interlude conveyed by the rest of the piece. I choose to make a distinct break in the musical action at this point, not abrupt, but subtle. It's as if there's a sudden knock at the door or tap on the shoulder. The news is bad; it's war and the hero is required to leave his love and get himself to the front at once. There is even an "oh darn" at the end, just before the hero leaves, perhaps slamming the door behind him.

I based my interpretation of this piece on that of Byron Janis who doesn't make the last chord a major (why?) as did Rubinstein.

Nocturne Op. 37 #2

This one is less often played and more humorous than most of the rest of the nocturnes. In some ways I don't even know why it's a nocturne. Being in an "easy" key doesn't help much either as it modulates all over the place, has a few really difficult little tricks to play and its form makes it in some ways more difficult to memorize; you can easily get yourself caught in several loops if you don't "take the right turns". If you don't and let your attention wander off, you may never be able to finish it. Nevertheless I did manage to memorize it and I'm pretty happy with the result.

There are basically two contrasting textures at play here, a fast, but not too fast, figure in the right hand played over a bounding bass line and a slow swinging theme with some "nostalgic" feeling associated with it. I imagined a series of scenes where a young man was courting a cute girl from a rather traditional family. He was trying like mad to get her away from them and go on a frolic but would always get drawn back to a scene of porch swings, tired old family stories, etc. Finally at the end the tired old family snares him or one thinks that the round and round of themes will continue indefinitely but is instead brought to an abrupt end.

A few things I learned from this piece were the importance of letting a melody lead even though the bass line has the beat. If you don't do this, the theme will get snagged every time. I even ran across a recording where someone had done this and it didn't sound good, not as "polished," or dare I say it, as "Polished," as if he had led with the theme. Contrasted with this is the slow swinging theme which must not be rushed even though one really wants to. Likewise it can't be louder than anything in the first more rapid theme. It doesn't even sound right if it's louder.

I based my own interpretation of this piece on Arthur Rubinstein's.

Bitten by the Bug

There will be more on here about Frédéric Chopin in the future as I have most definitely been bitten by the Chopin bug and am determined to play his music as well as I play everything else I have ever played in public. This is going to be quite an adventure.

It has become quite obvious to me that learning to play Chopin has already influenced my pianism in ways I wouldn't have predicted before. Once one "gets" the importance of "refinement," one must or at least can apply it to everything else in one's repertoire. The results can be quite incredible.