Chopin's second centenary

[dirac]

A nice article by Anne Midgette to note the occasion.

"Proper" Chopin style is at once a seal of approval and the subject of endless debate. It involves lightness and clarity of touch, something evinced by one of the latest crop of Chopinistes, Rafal Blechacz, in his new CD of two rather conventional piano concertos. It requires a singing legato: the illusion that the pianist is creating an unbroken line of sound, like a human voice. This is particularly true in the Nocturnes, which are incessantly compared to the operas of Chopin's friend Vincenzo Bellini.

But Chopin style can also evoke the kind of stormy outbursts the young Martha Argerich gives in her just-released CD, a collection of previously unreleased radio recordings from 1959 and 1967.

Do any BTers have a preferred interpreter(s) of Chopin? My untutored ear favors Cortot and Ashkenazy.

[papeetepatrick]

I want to hear those Argerich CD's. She is like a Maria Callas of the piano, all power and passion--whatever she did back then, it was bound to be good, even if not always in the purists' way. I usually don't think of Rubinstein as being one of my favourite pianists, but I have to admit I love much of his Chopin, especially the Ballades. I'd always thought of Chopin as more in the line of Mozart and then, after him, Debussy, who adored them both. I didn't know people were still talking about Chopin's music as 'weak and sickly', though, but they might as well, since he was weak and sickly. I remember all of those intros to Schirmer editions by James G. Huneker (I think that's his name), he was always talking the over-sentimentality angle. Much of the music is very big, though, especially the B Minor Sonata. I prefer Liszt's B Minor Sonata by a long shot, though, and Liszt in general--even though, since he was the great virtuous as well and a sort of rock star pianist unlike any other in history, there's a lot of occasional music, the transcriptions from opera, that aren't really supposed to be masterpieces in themselves. Some odd remarks in the article--of course as times change, a composer would 'play fast and loose' with sonata form; Beethoven's late sonatas could be said to do the same with Haydn and Mozart forms, and there are some late Mozart ones, like F Major (k. 533/494) that are full of strange things, especially in the second movement. I can't believe she used the word 'sissy' though, even in the 'not' sense.

I heard some beautiful Chopin done by Richter at Carnegie many years ago, and the first solo concert I ever heard at Carnegie was Ashkenazy doing all the Etudes. This was great playing, but I can't say I was ever quite moved. Midgette does have some good points about not doing too much at one time, but i don't think that nearly applies just to Chopin. It's interesting, since I've been with Ballet Talk, I've only thought of Chopin with the ballet, and it was interesting to read her about 'waltzes that weren't meant to be danced to', but a few of them can be and not just those for 'Les Sylphides' by professional dancers.

Much of Chopin probably does require a very delicate sensibility, nevertheless, and maybe an introvert more than an extrovert sometimes to bring out these 'intimacies'. Such considerations are also to be found in Debussy, who is a more important composer to me personally. All the intricacies of his Etudes were all worth it to me. One thing curious about the Chopin Etudes is how little they work the left hand (for the most part, there are exceptions--but the Double Thirds are all in the right hand in Chopin's, whereas they are in both in Debussy's, although the Octave Etude does work out both hands for octaves, the Revolutionary, of course, but Opus 10, No. 2, is only for the right hand fingerwork and is always extremely difficult, thought some can really toss it off. There's been lots of talk of how Chopin's Etudes are 'not just studies, but poetic works in their own right', but I think Debussy's are more so, and Chopin's poetry comes out more in his other works. Ofcourse, the E Major Etude in Op. 10 is as lyrically beautiful as possible, I'm never been really sure what it's an Etude for.) The E Major Scherzo is a great favourite of mine, and is extremely difficult to get the lightness it needs.)

[Quiggin]

I liked the end line of the piece:

One big secret of playing Chopin may simply be to remember that it's not as pretty as it sounds.

Like dirac, I like the Cortot recordings and his phrasings land on all the right spots, Ashkernazy less so -- the early Russian recordings were quite passionate -- beautiful shimmers of schools of notes -- but then he seemed to change when came to the west -- Patrick may have caught him in the transitional stage. Lipatti's take on the Walzes is simply delightful. A friend gave me bootlegged (do people still say that?) copies of Sofronitsky's performances (by way of Arlecchino), maybe an acquired taste, full hearted and variable. Bella Davidovitch said that they would wait anxiously to see what condition he would show up in, but that his playing, when it was on, was the most sublime of all.

[Paul Parish]

I used to rent a rooom from a very old lady, whose charm was only exceeded by her intelligence. She heard me one day playing the prelude in C minor, the one that's all chords, and later told me she'd heard Rachmaninoff play that in her youth and had never forgotten it "He played every chord as if it were final."

That made me look for Rachmaninoff's Chopin recordings -- they are out there, and hteir sense of architecture is sensational. He does not play his own or anybody else's music with excess of sentiment -- kinda of the opposite. he makes it monumental -- even all that ornament is like the scrollery on hte Taj Mahal. Check it out.

But even better for me were Artur Rubenstein and Guiomar Novaes -- Novaes because she was the flower of a patrician landed culture, such as I imagine Chopin himself came from, and such as Robbins suggests in Dances at a Gathering -- you must hear her play the mazurkas, e.g.,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3e2AJdB52A...feature=related

like THe Leopard, such a feeling for the land -- and hte sensibility is noble and fine and strange and spontaneous, and Rubenstein because -- well because of the scope of his imagination. He really carries me away.

Here he is blind and arthritic, playing it in Lodz, hte city of his birth, after having played it thousands of times in the course of his life, with tons of wrong notes, but such fire and depth of feeling,such power of building a phrase and piling one on top of another, sinking into such despondencies, building to such shattering climaxes, and speaking so directly to the heart. WHen I was a teen-aged boy, I wanted to play like Rubenstein, and I see nothing wrong with that aspiration now. He plays like Mahalia Jackson sings. it's righteous.

[ballet_n00b]

Much of Chopin probably does require a very delicate sensibility, nevertheless, and maybe an introvert more than an extrovert sometimes to bring out these 'intimacies'. Such considerations are also to be found in Debussy, who is a more important composer to me personally. All the intricacies of his Etudes were all worth it to me. One thing curious about the Chopin Etudes is how little they work the left hand (for the most part, there are exceptions--but the Double Thirds are all in the right hand in Chopin's, whereas they are in both in Debussy's, although the Octave Etude does work out both hands for octaves, the Revolutionary, of course, but Opus 10, No. 2, is only for the right hand fingerwork and is always extremely difficult, thought some can really toss it off. There's been lots of talk of how Chopin's Etudes are 'not just studies, but poetic works in their own right', but I think Debussy's are more so, and Chopin's poetry comes out more in his other works. Ofcourse, the E Major Etude in Op. 10 is as lyrically beautiful as possible, I'm never been really sure what it's an Etude for.) The E Major Scherzo is a great favourite of mine, and is extremely difficult to get the lightness it needs.)

Interesting comment about the Debussy etudes, which as I'm sure you're aware aren't nearly as popular as alot of his other music (the preludes for example). I'm not particularly familiar with most of them. You're right about the RH bias in Chopin, which is why Godowsky liked to transcribe them for the LH. Chopin liked to give the LH arpeggio figures, like the "cartwheel" figurations of the E minor posthumous waltz (incidentally, I think Schumann imitated this idiosyncrasy rather well in Carnaval). Personally, I think the Preludes are Chopin's best set (Cortot's is my favourite version). Btw, I also love the E major Scherzo, Wild, Richter, Petrov and Ashkenazy all play that brilliantly although I think I like Wild the best. I also agree with what you wrote about introverts, even though people like Rubinstein were most definitely extroverts, the music is itself often introverted. As far as Argerich is concerned, I can't say that she's an artist after my own heart, I have a F minor concerto video from the 80s which she bangs out rather obnoxiously. Nor am I particularly taken by any of her early Chopin. I hate Blechacz, he plays Chopin like it's all perfumed drawing room music, his playing is also incredibly boring imo. Rubinstein I love in everything he plays, his Chopin is great but it's hardly the ne plus ultra imo. Dirac's suggestions are good especially Cortot. Ashkenazy I like better when he was young, his recordings from the Chopin Competition (where he placed 2nd) are fabulous. It includes the best 25/3 I've ever heard. Cortot is always great musically although there lots of wrong notes. There's a rather rare live etudes set from Pollini when he was 14 which is very interesting for the amazing mechanism he had at such a young age, (though unfortunately it is pitched sharp which I find irritating). I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favourites Sergio Fiorentino and Josef Hofmann who were both great chopinists, as well as Horowitz whom I love in just about everything he played. Rachmaninoff is also amazing, the B flat sonata recording!! fabulous pianist. Ignaz Friedman's recordings are extraordinary, for example the third ballade where he plays this ascending scalar run at least TWICE as fast as every other pianist, producing an amazing effect. There's also the ending of 25/6 where he harmonises a descending double note passage in A major (basically a Neapolitan cadenza leading to the tonic G sharp minor) in the RH with an added A major scale in the LH. Beautiful. Kissin's concerti age 12, I have the video of the E minor and he was a real wonder child; ethereally beautiful, feeling the music with every ounce of his being and communicating this to the audience. Really there are so many pianists who play Chopin wonderfully, and so differently too! In any case I'll be listening to lots of Chopin come Monday.

[papeetepatrick]

Here's Ivo Pogorelich, imo the best young pianist of the last 30 years, making the 3rd Scherzo work, even for me. I used to even play it a lot and never loved it, which proves me distance from Chopin. The 4th is light-years beyond this (I should have played that instead, it's the only one of the Scherzi I really like). And, of course, Ms. Argerich walked out of the Chopin Competition when Pogorelich didn't win it (she would have done such a gesture so well...). I adore his Liszt Sonata and Schumann Symphonic Etudes. I think he's way beyond Kissin, although Kissin good for things like 'Feux-Follets'. Lots of people claim Pogorelich 'affected', I don't find him so.

Thanks for reminding me of other pianists I hadn't even thought of last night. Agree about Cortot with the rest of you, of course. Pollini still a marvelous pianist, maybe it shows best in toughter-so8nding music like Boulez 2nd Sonata. Agree also with you about Horowitz most of the time.

which as I'm sure you're aware aren't nearly as popular as alot of his other music (the preludes for example).

Not with the public, perhaps, but pianists have been taking them on a lot more in the last 20 years (there are probably 20 recordings of them by now, there used to be only Gieseking's, and those were not really stellar): Thibaudet's are excellent (his essaying of the very accessible Etudes pour les Arpeges Composes totally convinced me and changed my whole approach to it=--he plays the arpeges like melody lines, slowing them down, and it works. Thibaudet can be great, even though he likes to be the showman, and really can do up those Liszt operas. There's also a Swiss-based Chinese girl who played the 4ths superbly, I can't find her name now. Just noticed that Dutch National Ballet had used '12, 2, and 4' for ballet--as well they should, there is literally nothing more joyous than the Etude pour les Accords. But the difference in Debussy's and Chopin's octave etudes is especially stark--the former an exbuberant waltz, with later Chinese instrument sounds, the latter a lot of noise. One friend used to say the Bach WTC, the Beethoven Sonatas, and the Chopin Etudes were the 'Pianists' Bible'. I said I agreed with the first two, but thought the Chopin Etudes as 'pretty Czerny'. I think they do have pain in them, which makes them really seem like etudes, with a couple of exceptions. I used to play the 'Fantasy' a good bit too, and never really loved it. He can't do 'voluptuous', yes, that's it, it doesn't sound voluptuous as with Wagner and Liszt and Debussy or Tchaikovsky, it just sounds bloated. The F Minor Ballade is a great exception, and a masterpiece. I used to play the B Minor Sonata a lot, and that's where I found out about his bloated passages--although I do love the 1st Movement.

Good point, ballet noob, about Rubinstein and the introvert/extrovert matter: I was thinking that as I wrote that up last night. Rubinstein was very urbane and gentlemanly, so while being very much the extrovert, would be always polite and take the time with all those matters that, say, the F # Major Nocturne requires, or the C Minor Nocturne (I didn't enjoy playing either of these, especially the last one, even when teachers would tell me the slow section was 'like a knight preparing for battle')

I think I found out something by mentioning 'Les Sylphides' last night. I'd much rather see Chopin danced to, including Dances at a Gathering, than just hear him. I think I admire Chopin more than love him, although not so hateful as Ives, who said something about Chopin always wearing a dress, But then he was beastly about Debussy and Mozart as well. Probably if I had to choose one single piece of Chopin that I love comparably to my favourite composers, it would be the F Minor Ballade, although I like the G Minor quite a bit too. But it's like those 'waterfall sections' or whatever they are in the Scherzo linked with Pogorelich: I think if you like those, you are a true Chopin lover. I can't stand those, and was forced to learn it. Pogorelich sells it to me, but I'd still much rather hear the 4th Scherzo. I don't know if he's got a recording of that.

[Pamela Moberg]

When I was a small kid I relished the interpretations of Chopin by a Romanian pianist, Dinu Lipatti. I had some records then and thinking back, I think Dinu Lipatti managed to capture the very essence of Chopin. Chopin is not easy to play and sometimes I think that one should be East European to be able to catch the innermost feeling of the music.

Pogorelich of course falls into this category and I like his interpretations very much.

[dirac]

Thank you for mentioning Lipatti, Pamela. I forgot about him.

Wonderful responses, everyone.

[papeetepatrick]

Chopin is not easy to play and sometimes I think that one should be East European to be able to catch the innermost feeling of the music.

Pogorelich of course falls into this category and I like his interpretations very much.

Very good point, and yet both he and Liszt came from Eastern Europe and became cosmopolitan Parisians. Here is perhaps an example of that aspect of Chopin from that most elegant of pianists, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. I've never heard a thing of his I didn't think was close to perfect, although he's not to all tastes. So here is the First Ballade:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...05611106874924#

[Helene]

Here is perhaps an example of that aspect of Chopin from that most elegant of pianists, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. I've never heard a thing of his I didn't think was close to perfect, although he's not to all tastes. So here is the First Ballade:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...05611106874924#

Thank you so much for the link -- I love his playing.

[CM]

Here is perhaps an example of that aspect of Chopin from that most elegant of pianists, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. I've never heard a thing of his I didn't think was close to perfect, although he's not to all tastes. So here is the First Ballade:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...05611106874924#

Thank you so much for the link -- I love his playing.

Although I believe that some find his performances slow, my favourite chopin CD is Geza Anda's collection of waltzes. His minute waltz is on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykyf30Dxqy4

[dirac]

Thank you for the link, CM. I hadn't heard Anda before.

[dirac]

Happened to come across this.

And to make up for another Argerich no-show, Deutsche Grammophon has just released “Argerich Plays Chopin,” a CD of recently discovered early broadcast recordings she made in Germany. It begins with her setting afire Chopin’s First Ballade in a studio in Berlin in 1959, when “the exceptionally attractive Argentine pianist,” to quote the CD booklet notes, was an impressively impulsive 17.

The remainder of the disc contains performances from 1967, two years after Argerich won the Chopin Competition, which turned her into a star. According to DG’s breathless prose, that win proved more dazzling than such 1965 news as a Soviet cosmonaut’s first walk in space, Louis Armstrong’s first East Berlin appearance or the first woman to win the Peace Prize from the German Publishers Guild.

[papeetepatrick]

Thanks for posting this, dirac. Argerich is such a character as well as fiery and brilliant artist. I hope I get a chance to hear this.

[dirac]

She's never dull, that's for sure.

[leonid17]

She's never dull, that's for sure.

Absolutely, she is often more than arresting, but her challenging of one's perception of a piece,is always a worthwhile experience.

I first heard Martha Argerich at her London debut in 1964 and have several recordings she made with the London Symphony Orchestra. Not having listened to them for a long time, I will listen to them again today.

As to Chopin she is definitely far from being my first choice as I grew up listening to Rubinstein, Cherkassky and Richter which led me to live performances with Ashkenazy and later Pogorelich and Zimmerman. For the mazurkas, its Horowitz.

Ashkenazy was an inspiration for Londoners in the 1960's and with his teaming with a group of other leading young virtuosi for a series of summer concerts, he became a great favourite of mine.

[ballet_n00b]

Happened to come across this.

And to make up for another Argerich no-show, Deutsche Grammophon has just released “Argerich Plays Chopin,” a CD of recently discovered early broadcast recordings she made in Germany. It begins with her setting afire Chopin’s First Ballade in a studio in Berlin in 1959, when “the exceptionally attractive Argentine pianist,” to quote the CD booklet notes, was an impressively impulsive 17.

The remainder of the disc contains performances from 1967, two years after Argerich won the Chopin Competition, which turned her into a star. According to DG’s breathless prose, that win proved more dazzling than such 1965 news as a Soviet cosmonaut’s first walk in space, Louis Armstrong’s first East Berlin appearance or the first woman to win the Peace Prize from the German Publishers Guild.

I have this cd, it's quite good. I also love the quote about DG's liner notes; the endless hyperbolic extolment of the recording artist's virtues in sleeve notes is something that irritates me to no end.

Incidentally, Schumann's bicentennary was a couple of weeks ago.

[kfw]

And to make up for another Argerich no-show, Deutsche Grammophon has just released “Argerich Plays Chopin,” a CD of recently discovered early broadcast recordings she made in Germany.

"Martha Argerich -- Debut Recital" has two pieces not on this new release: Scherzo No. 39, Op. 3, and Barcarole, Op. 60.

[dirac]

Thanks, kfw.

[CM]

Thanks, kfw.

15 hours (60 programmes) of Chopin recitals "un ete avec Chopin" are available on France 3 (audio) for the next week (up until September 10th?). Performances are from the 200th anniversary recitals at Chateauroux and at Salle Pleyel on 27th and 28th February this year. List of programmes/access to recitals is at: http://programmes.france3.fr/musique-classique/?page=evenements&id_article=737

More information on the recitals and the pianists is available at http://www.frederic-chopin.com/anniv%202010/Program.pdf

Videos of the last six recitals are on http://www.pluzz.fr/recherche.html?q=chopin - they are only on pluzz fr for one week, so we will lose a video every day - video from the 28th August - the barcarolle - will probably go within the next few hours.

[dirac]

Great news, CM. Thank you very much for posting this!

[CM]

The 16th International Chopin Piano Competition is underway. Online broadcasting of the first stage is available on:

http://konkurs.chopin.pl/en/edition/xvi/online/broadcasting

[dirac]

Thank you, CM, for another great link. I was not aware the competition was underway. Hope some here will listen and comment!