Professor Norman Davies, the eminent British historian, has written an essay on Frederic Chopin on the occasion of the forthcoming Chopin Festival in London.
The Festival will take place over the weekend of the 15th/16th of October 2022 at the Polish Social and Cultural Centre POSK in London, and it will be a celebration of Poland’s unique musical genius, Fryderyk Chopin. The entire programme of the Festival is available here.
YOU CAN BUY TICKETS FOR ALL EVENTS HERE.
Below you can read Norman Davies essey written on the occasion of the Chopin Festival in London.
The French composer, Hector Berlioz, once said of his contemporary and fellow musician: “Chopin was dying all his life.” What he sought to convey was the perception that both Chopin’s personality and his music were constantly overshadowed by a persistent mood of melancholy — by an ingrained tristesse, caused partly by an oversensitive nature and partly by the none-too-comfortable circumstances of a maladjusted exile. And Chopin agreed, saying “I have long been gripped by an arid melancholy.” The marvellously melodious and energetic music stood in sharp contrast to the struggling existence of its creator.
Of himself, Chopin said: “I am a sick man, who occasionally enjoys short periods of health,” or, writing to a friend: “my earthly body has been a terrible disappointment.” He had very little sense of well-being, and produced his music as a form of spontaneous, daily antidote. The miraculous cascade of beautiful sounds was somehow forced out of him, like brilliant bursts of light cast into the surrounding gloom.
These paradoxes appear and re-appear throughout Chopinology.
One must also state at the outset, that during his short life and for many decades afterwards, Chopin was widely underrated outside of France. In that first half of the Nineteenth Century, his name was not bracketed with the universally recognised ‘great composers’ of the day – Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms. The word was that Chopin was a brilliant lightweight, a crowd-pleaser, a clever dilettante, who shone at the piano but didn’t write serious symphonies, operas or oratorios. He almost confirmed it himself. “Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation”, he said, “but I have only the keyboard in my head.”
For long, only two leading musicians championed his memory. One was Franz Liszt, the fiery Hungarian, who had once jockeyed with Chopin for the laurels of ‘most outstanding pianist’ and who in 1852 published the first biography. The other was the much younger, Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), who not only revered his predecessor as a Parisian celebrity, but also valued his role as musical innovator.
Chopin’s dates – 1810-1849 – place him firmly in the early phase of Romanticism in European music. That phase, which conventionally starts at the end of the eighteenth century, was characterised by composers, who broke the rules of their classical predecessors, who escaped from the control of noble patrons, and who felt free to let their imagination rip, giving greater expression to emotional extremes, to the wilder forces of nature, and to the folk music of the common people. It also coincided with important technical developments in music, notably with the invention of the pianoforte, which, as its name suggests, possessed the capacity of producing a wider range of sound, and hence a greater variety of emotional tone. It took place during the turbulence of the Napoleonic Wars, and the tensions of the ultra-conservative repressions that followed. The acknowledged pioneers in this shift of style were the Germans, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Carl Maria von Weber, the Austrian, Franz Schubert, the Italian, Gioachino Rossini, and the above-mentioned Liszt and Berlioz. Some musicologists would also include the operatic giants, Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi.
To this list, one must add the lesser known name of Vincenzo Bellini (1801-35), whom Chopin specially admired, and whose influence was at its height during Chopin’s first decade in Paris. Bellini’s life was even shorter than Chopin’s, yet he managed to win a huge following not only among the musical public but equally among professional musicians. The marks of Bellini’s skill were found in what Verdi called the “long, long, long melodies such as no-one before had written”, and, as Wagner observed in his “almost uncanny ability to match music with text and psychology. “ Bellini’s greatest triumph, which Chopin witnessed in person, came with the production in Paris of I Puritani in January 1835, shortly before his death.
How exactly Chopin built a highly individual style of his own from the general trends of the age is not a matter for amateurs. Here I can only suggest a few cardinal elements. First and foremost, one must point to the strong melodic line of his compositions, which captures his listeners from the very first phrase and transports them effortlessly along. Important, too, is the firm rhythmic structure, sometimes taken from dance rhythms, sometimes not. The unusual keys, which he employs, like C-sharp Minor or G-flat Major, impart a special flavour, while sensational ornamentations, racing up and down the keyboard, impart a breath-taking, ethereal quality. On top of everything, Chopin conjured up an element of sheer fantasy, hard to define but giving his works a unique but instantly recognisable identity. A piece by Chopin can never be confused with someone else’s – “Cannon buried in flowers” was Schumann’s summary.
Chopin’s oeuvre — the sum total of his work — is confined almost exclusively to pieces for piano, or for piano and orchestra, and clearly derives from his pianistic virtuosity. It may be divided up into the small number of longer compositions, like the two concertos and two sonatas, and the larger number of shorter works, though it is better grouped by genre.
One group, the 21 polonaises, the 59 mazurkas, and the 19 Polish songs, are self-evidently based on the sounds and forms of Poland’s native folk music. They are not, however, simple derivatives. They are elaborate and refined musical adaptations and improvisations, often far removed from the bucolic originals.
Another group, the 27 Etudes or ‘Piano Studies’ have been described as “the foundation of what was then a revolutionary playing style”, and include some of “the most innovative and challenging pieces in the repertoire”. Some of the most popular ones – such as Opus 10, nr 3 ‘Tristesse’, Op 10, nr 12, the ‘Revolutionnaire’, or Op 25, nr 11, the ‘Winter Wind’ – have been given nicknames not of Chopin’s making. Taken together, they are sometimes regarded as a coherent set of exercises in the composer’s inimitable method.
The cycle of 24 Préludes, Opus 28, progresses though each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys in the classical register, together with the full gamut of recognised tempos from agitato, lento and vivace to largo, sostenuto, cantabile, allegro, allegretto and presto con fuoco. In the words of one biographer, this scintillating display of musical brilliance “alone ensures Chopin’s claim to immortality.”
The 21 Nocturnes – literally “pieces for the night” – developed a musical form invented by the Irish composer, John Field. They feature strong melodies in the left hand, creating drama and tension. They may be judged a wonderful synthesis of romantic and classical elements.
The four Ballades or ‘Tales’ possess a similar lyrical quality, while rambling more extensively over the musical landscape. Though the meaning of ‘Ballade’ has prompted various interpretations, ranging from “dance-piece” from the Italian ballata to ‘heroic, medieval minstrel-song”, the form is essentially a variant of the sonata written in 6/4 or 6/8 time and featuring a mirror reprise during the re-capitulation. Nr.1 in G-minor Op 23 (1835) was described by Chopin as “my dearest work”. Nr 2 in F-major Op 38 (1839) was one of a number of unfinished works he took with him to Majorca. Nr 3 in A-flat minor (1841) was allegedly inspired by Mickiewicz’s poem Undine and is structurally similar to the ‘Raindrop’ Prelude. The contrapuntal Nr 4 in F-minor (1842) was described by the British pianist, John Ogden as “the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions, containing the experience of a lifetime.”
The 36 Valses or ‘Waltzes’ are not, like those of Johann Strauss, designed for dancing, but rather for concert performance. Composed in the familiar ¾ time, they are said to have been modelled on Von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance (1819). In spite of Chopin’s desire to destroy a number of juvenile items, they are widely admired, and include the hugely popular the Grande Valse Brillante in E-flat Major (1833), the C-sharp minor Waltz (1847), and the amusing Minute Waltz in D-flat Major (also 1847).
The four Impromptus and four Scherzos are sometimes listed among Chopin’s “minor works”. But caution is necessary. Chopin’s “minor works” often turn out to be dazzling jewels.
Everyone has their favourite, of course. Mine would undoubtedly be the incomparable “Revolutionary Study”, written, despite what some critics say, to mark a specific historic event. Sometimes known as ‘An Étude on the Bombardment of Warsaw’, it was composed in late 1831, when Chopin was suffering most acutely from news of the November Rising. The shattering torrents of notes reflect the cannonades, explosions, salvoes of the battlefield, and pauses for breath between them. Listeners, too, hold their breath as the hard-pressed left-hand, engaged in a relentless barrage of semi-quavers, struggles to keep pace with the thunderous chords, soaring melodies and subtle cross-rythms given to the right hand. I once heard it played in Paris to massive applause by Artur Rubinstein, and I have never heard anything to surpass it. People who now wonder what the bombardment of Warsaw looked like need only turn to Putin’s current attack on Ukraine.
Overall, Chopin’s collected works are limited in quantity and almost unfailingly superb in quality. The earliest known piece, the Rondo in C-minor, Opus 1 (1825) was composed in Warsaw at the age of 15. The last piece, the Mazurka in F-minor, (1849), appears in the posthumous collection, Opus 69.
In the last resort, Chopin’s piano technique has to be put down to a divine gift; it belongs to a branch of wizadry which he himself could not fully explain. Critics of later times have the same problem. There are no recordings and no films. In desperation, one is tempted to say that all the fingers had to be trained to play, the ears to hear, and the feet to work the pedals. Yet there are clues, and the maestro himself did leave a Projet de Méthode or ‘Sketch of a Method’ for pupils to follow. Digital dexterity is certainly required. “Everything is a matter of knowing good fingering”, Chopin wrote, [but] “we need no less to use the rest of the hand, the wrists, the forearm and the upper arm.” Aural precision is vital, too, “In this immensity of sounds”, Chopin also wrote, “we find a region in which the vibrations are more easily perceptible to us.” Unfortunately, the ‘region’ is not defined. And then there’s the tricky issue of Rubato. All Chopin analysts discuss ‘tempo rubato’ or ‘stolen time’, whereby in suitable passages, the tempo can be quickened or slowed down. When composing, Chopin made use of a metronome in order to keep a check on strict time-keeping. But he equally advocated elasticity, varying the tempo where appropriate, just as he advocated ‘looseness’ of the hands and fingers. In short, like a true Romantic trained in classical method, he both supported the rules and the freedom to break them.
In the end, this formula could not be easily followed. As Berlioz once remarked: “has created a kind of chromatic embroidery … whose effect is so strange and piquant as to be impossible to describe … virtually nobody but Chopin himself can play this music and give it this unusual turn.” Another admirer [Hiller] commented opaquely: “What in the hands of others was elegant embellishment, in his hands became a colourful wreath of flowers.” So one has to suspect that the air of mystery and ambiguity was deliberate. “Nothing is more odious”, Chopin remarked, “than music without hidden meaning.”
Historians and biographers, whether musical experts or otherwise, are staggered by the question: “Where did all this undoubted brilliance come from?” How and where did Frederick Chopin garner all the ingredients, which he had to harness to his in-born talent? My answers are tentative.
Firstly, the young Chopin received a first-class musical education. His mother was a keen amateur, who played the piano well. His father, though a French professor, was modestly proficient on the flute and violin . So his parents encouraged him from an early age not only to have piano lessons but also to receive a thorough grounding in all aspects of musicology. Already as a teenager, he had their blessing to become a full-time musician. After completing the Warsaw Lyceum in 1826, he knuckled down to a three-year course at the Warsaw Conservatoire under the Silesian, Jozef Elsner, studying theory and composition. Elsner, like Chopin’s earlier piano teacher, Wojciech Żywny, was a great believer in J.S.Bach, and in this the pupil took on the masters’ guidance. Henceforth, wherever he travelled, he took his copy of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier with him.
Secondly, thanks to the breadth of his education, Chopin was able to take the first steps in composition at an early stage. In later life, he was embarrassed by his ‘infantile’ efforts. Yet the experience meant, when he went abroad in 1830, that he was more advanced in the art of composition than would otherwise have been the case.
Thirdly, as an inhabitant of Poland’s capital, Chopin grew up in a stimulating intellectual environment. Warsaw was no cultural backwater. It boasted an opera house, numerous theatres, several churches which put on both sacred and secular music, a number of competing concert societies, musical printers and bookshops, a weekly musical newspaper, and an array of aristocrat salons, where leading artists performed. Also, since it was the centre in 1806-15 of a French-ruled Duchy, it saw a big influx of influential figures from across the French Empire, providing the youthful prodigy with valuable contacts and connections long before he left for Paris.
And so the list continues. Though essentially a city lad, Chopin went out into the surrounding villages during vacations and heard folk music played by peasant ensembles. And he adored it. Here, a word of caution is necessary. Polish ‘folk music’ is something of a misnomer, in that many of the principal songs and dances in the repertoire did not derive from rural folk. The mazurek and the kujawiak, with their lively leaps and shouts and swirling merry-go-round, were indeed peasant dances. But the stately polonez was an emblematic parade of noble origin, in which Chopin would have participated both in his parents’ home at Zelazowa Wola and in Warsaw’s salons. And the wonderful krakowiak is based on the rhythms of cantering cavalry. Chopin took it all in, noted it down, and parked it deep in the subconscious.
Chopin’s mental calm was seriously clouded by the outbreak of the November Rising and the Russo-Polish War of 1830-31, which coincided with his departure from Poland and disturbed him long afterwards. For several months he feared for the safety of his loved ones, writing agonised letters to his friends and family:
“ …. the enemy must have reached our home. The suburbs must have been stormed and burned. Johnny, where are you? William has certainly perished on the barricades. Oh God! Do you exist? ….. Have you not seen enough of these Muscovite crimes, or are you yourself a Muscovite? My poor, kind Father. … Perhaps my sisters have fallen victim to the fury of the Muscovite scum. … The Muscovite is lord of the world. Oh, why could I not slay a single Muscovite ? “
The echoes of today’s Ukraine are unmistakable. And they turned him into an anxious, ailing exile, whose music had to fight to be heard against his moods.
On reaching Paris, Chopin landed in the continent’s most dynamic cultural hub, where he could meet all the leading figures, catch all the latest ideas, and shine at the keyboard in all the grandest salons. He could not have found a more stimulating milieu anywhere else in Europe. Yet, as the endorsement on his passport revealed, he was only in France “on transit”. He was duly granted French citizenship, but in one real sense, he remained in mental transit in France to the end of his life.
Lastly, Chopin’s music owed most to his delicate, wistful, reticent temperament. Here, I must tread carefully. Outwardly, Chopin was no moper or croaker. If not too uncomfortable, he could be really good company. He loved to joke and tease, and apart from playing the piano, he had great skill both as a cartoonist and caricaturist, who drew marvellous sketches, and as a mimic, who made his friends roar with laughter at his convincing imitations. And he was no mean letter-writer. Nonetheless, he would retreat all too often into a inward state of self-doubt, dejection, and undefined longing. He created an aura around himself, in which his music had somehow to break out through its own energy and defiance, in apparent contrast to its creator.
By general consent, Chopin “brought Romantic piano music to unprecedented heights of expressiveness”. But how exactly he contrived to do so, even he would have been hard pressed to explain. He was carried along by the sensational success of his few concerts, by a rich income from teaching and publishing, and by the generous plaudits of his peers. “Hats off, gentlemen”, wrote Robert Schumann in a review already in 1831, “to a genius”. But behind it all was a pall of doubt and nervous tension.
In adulthood, Chopin’s personal life was far less contented than his childhood had been. Although he enjoyed being the centre of attention, especially when seated at the piano and surrounded by swooning admirers, he had to overcome weeks and months of hesitation and procrastination before allowing himself to perform in public. Statistically, he only brought himself to complete thirty major concerts in his whole life, which works out at a mere one concert per year. In consequence, he spent most of his time esconced in his rooms, poring over the piano, worrying, composing in fits and starts, receiving the occasional guest or student, writing letters and hiding from the lively social life, which he might otherwise have enjoyed. He had a store of acquaintances, but no really close friends, and was particularly awkward with women, often finding himself tongue-tied and unable to express his feelings. Still in Warsaw, he had become infatuated with the soprano, Konstancja Gladkowska, but was unable to develop the relationship. In the mid-1830s, he actually became engaged in private to another young Polish woman, Maria Wodzinska, but could not find the way to deal with her parents, as was necessary in those days, and to put the engagement onto a firm footing. In one of his letters, he wrote: ” I often tell my piano what I want to tell you.”
For eight years, 1837-45, Chopin attached himself intimately to one of the most famous, not to say notorious women in France, Amantine Dupin aka Georges Sand, a mother of two children, who habitually wore male attire, smoked cigars in public, and nonchantly blew cigar smoke into the faces of would-be objectors. Six years older than her protégé/’toy-boy’, Georges Sand was vastly more experienced than he in the ways of the world, being a highly popular and subversive novelist, an active republican, and the protagonist of numerous well-advertised heterosexual and lesbian affairs. Of her, Victor Hugo said: “George Sand cannot determine whether she is male or female. I entertain a high regard for all my colleagues, but it is not my place to decide whether she is my sister or my brother”, but also, in respect of her artistry: “Elle avait en elle la lyre.” [She had the Lyre within herself]. Nonetheless, she cared nothing for conventional mores, passing many summers with Chopin at her country house at Nohant near Bourges, and the winter of 1838-9 at Valldemossa on Majorca. Chopin was sufficiently buoyant to compose many of his masterpieces in her company, but their fruitful intervals were interspersed with violent fallings-out. The break came after Sand accused Chopin of making advances to her daughter. “I loved her”, the composer confessed of Sand; “she was unbearable.” After which, he returned to the lonely life of a sickly and disgruntled bachelor. “How dismal it is, “he wrote, “to have no-one in the morning to share my joys and sorrows.”
Strong rumours linking the fading Chopin with another femme fatale and former pupil, Countess Delfina Potocka, have been strongly dismissed; their alleged correspondence has been proved a forgery.
The nature of Chopin’s illness has equally aroused controversy. Liszt thought it more psychosomatic than real. But in the late 1840s, it became real enough, having all the symptoms of galloping tuberculosis. When the stricken genius lay dying at his residence on the Place Vendôme, “all the grand ladies of Paris thought it de rigeur to feint in his presence”. “Play some Mozart for me”, he whispered to his sister, “and I shall hear it where I’m going.” Chopin died in agony on 17 October 1849, and was buried in style at the Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise. My French encyclopedia states that his funeral was attended by “obsèques magnifiques”, “magnificent rites”.
At the time of his death, Chopin’s reputation was, at the best, mixed. He had his dedicated followers, of course, but sour detractors as well, even among the Polish exiles. The Romantic poet, Juliusz Slowacki, for example, who was in Paris, was clearly not an admirer. In a letter to his mother, he confessed that Chopin’s music “makes me vomit.” Even the greatest of the exiles, Adam Mickiewicz, could be censorious. One day he ran into Chopin on the Boulevard St.Germain, and gave him what amounted to a ticking-off, muttering something along the lines of: “look here, young man, why are you strolling along the boulevard instead of doing some work? You are always attending those aristocratic salons, when you could be writing a masterpiece.”
Yet after his death, Chopin’s reputation rose inexorably. One reason for this was the fact that the second half of the Nineteenth Century had become the ‘age of the piano’. Every respectable middle-class family in Europe possessed an instrument. Piano-playing multiplied enormously. Piano concerts proliferated. And composing for the piano grew in prestige. A long procession of prodigious pianists toured the world.
Many composers for piano were French, all of them trained with an eye on the Chopin tradition and keenly aware of his legacy. Among them were Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921), a prominent teacher with prominent pupils: Léo Delibes (1836-91), Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Albert Roussel (1869-1937) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). In their ’impress-ionism’ Debussy and Ravel were consciously building on Chopin’s style.
Many of the leading Romantic pianists were Polish and were knowingly following in Chopin’s footsteps. They included Moritz Moszczkowski (1854-1925) born in Breslau/Wroclaw, Ignacy Paderewski (1860-1941), Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938), Zygmunt Stojowski (1870-1946), Jozef Hofmann (1876-1957) born in Krakow, and Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) born in Lodz.
Of these, the Galician maestro, Jozef Hofmann, deserves special mention. Although his family soon moved to Berlin, and he himself settled in the USA for over fifty years, he was irrevocably connected to his origins. A child prodigy like Chopin, he first played in public in Warsaw aged 5. He made his first American tour, coast to coast, as a teenager in 1888-9. And during that tour, he made the first ever musical recording on an Edison machine, playing a Chopin mazurka. Of his skill at the keyboard, it has been written: “Hofmann’s effortless technique permitted a kaleidoscope of tonal colourings and expressive guises ranging from aching tenderness to heaven-storming pandemonium.” In his hands, and those of others, Chopin’s music was clearly in the ascendant.
Yet other factors were at work, too. The late Nineteenth Century saw the rise of ‘national schools’ of music, and the widespread recognition of national feeling was a vital element in the understanding of music. The brilliant French School has already been outlined. In Germany, the ‘New German School’, which erupted in the 1850s raised eyebrows, when Liszt was included alongside Wagner, and when commentators talked of the “War of the Romantics”. Moreover, Johannes Brahms (1833-97), though counted as one of the ‘Big Three German B’s – Bach, Beethoven and Brahms – wanted nothing to do with it; in 1860, he published a strident manifesto denouncing the whole controversy.
Wikipedia’s ‘List of German Romantic composers’ contains over one hundred names, from Ludwig Abel to Emilie Zumsteeg. Most of them are totally forgotten, and several hotly disputed. For example, was the Cologne-born ‘King of Operetta’, Jakob or Jacques Offenbach (1819-80), who spent his entire career in Paris, a German or a French composer ? And what of the genial Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), who does not appear on Wikipedia’s list? Often regarded as the continuator of the German Romantic tradition after Brahms, Schumann and Mendelssohn, Mahler was born in Kalište in eastern Bohemia of German-speaking Jewish parents, studied at the Vienna conservatoire, converted to Catholicism, produced works of scintillating power and beauty, and died long before his works could be banned by the Nazis. He, like Chopin, was long underrated by his contemporaries.
Nonetheless, it is not difficult to define what a ‘national school’ of music consists of. Each of them appeals to the musical traditions of a particular country, each of them cultivates a particular brand of folk music, and each of them sees itself as a component of wider movements to strengthen the culture and identity of a particular nation. Many of the leading figures, though not all, came from stateless nations aspiring for independence: Modest Mussorgsky (1839-81), leader of the so-called ‘Russian Five’, Antonin Dvořak (1841-1904), the Czech, Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), the Norwegian, Edward Elgar (1857-1934) the Englishman, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), the Finn, Jose Vianna da Motta (1868-1948), the Portuguese, Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), the Spaniard, Bela Bartok (1881-1945), the Hungarian, and Georges Enescu (1881-1955), the Romanian. Heading the list, however, is Fryderyk Chopin, the pioneer of the genre, who had died before any of the others started, and whose ‘Polishness’ had once been something of a barrier to full recognition.
By 1900, therefore, Chopin’s standing had advanced greatly. He was approaching pole position as a composer for piano, but was also beginning to be seen among composers in general as a harbinger of modern sensitivity, a prophet well ahead of his time, and a universal arbiter elegantiarum, the ultimate role model of good musical taste.
Moreover, his fame was taking root in his native Poland. In the age of late Romanticism, each of the partitioning powers possessed a formidable musical tradition dominated by names such as Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovksy (1840-1893), Richard Strauss (1864-1949), and Anton Brück-ner (1824-1896). But even so, the founding of musical academies in the main Polish cities – in Krakow in 1888, for example – the creation of philharmonic societies, and the building of grand, philharmonic halls – in Warsaw in 1901 – ensured that local music-making also flourished. Ignacy Paderewski in particular was using the recital platform to harness music to the national cause. On 23 October 1910, on the centenary of Chopin’s birth, he was in Lemberg/Lwow in Austro-Hungary pronouncing fiery sentiments, which in Russian-ruled Warsaw would have put him in prison:
“Blow after blow has fallen on our stricken race, thunderbolt after thunderbolt … Our hearts are disarranged, our minds disordered. We are being taught respect for all that belongs to others, contempt for all that is our own… “Away with Poland,” they cry. “Long live Humanity”, as if humanity can thrive through the death of nations …
Yet here, at this very moment, there rises … a radical spirit. What light, what valour, what energy was in him ! What strength of endeavour ! … In the midst of suffering, through heart-ache and creative pain, he marked the burning trace of his existence to his country’s glory. By a bloodless fight, fought on the plains of peace, he assured the victory of Polish thought.”
Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica was catching up. Its famous Eleventh Edition (1912) still grudgingly complains that Chopin never composed a symphony. But its praise for his mastery of the piano knew no bounds:
“Imagine a delicate man of extreme refinement of mien and manner sitting at the piano and playing with no sway of the body, and scarcely any movement of the arms, depending entirely upon his narrow, feminine hands and slender fingers. The wide arpeggios in the left hand maintained a continuous stream of tone by the strict legato, and fine and constant use of the damper pedal formed an harmonious sub-structure for a wonderfully poetic cantabile. His delicate pianissimo, the ever-changing modifications of tone and time (tempo rubato) were of indescribable effect. Even in the energetic passages, he scarcely ever exceeded an ordinary mezzoforte. His playing as a whole was unique in its kind.” (EB XI, vol VI, p 268)
Whoever wrote those words could not possibly have seen or heard Chopin play, but was relying on what by then was the accepted narrative.
Four years later, Poland was on the brink of regaining her independence, and the long-dead Chopin was playing his part. Paderewski, the pianist and soon-to-be prime minister, was on tour in the USA, and was blatantly combining keyboard virtuosity with uninhibited politics. Chopin was his secret weapon. He would close his programme with a roof-raising rendering of the Revolutionary Study, then stand up and declare; “Poland must be free”. He tried the trick on President Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and it worked. Next year, Polish Independence was included in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and was soon added to Allied War Aims. Before 1918 was out, it was an accomplished reality.
The reactions to Chopin of modern master musicians are well worth noting. Artur Rubinstein, twenty years Paderewski’s junior, was described by the New York Times as “a Chopinist without peer”, and in an amazing career spanning eight decades, started as a boy prodigy playing in front of Ravel and Saint-Saens and continued till the end of the Cold War. Like Jozef Hofmann before him and Chopin himself, he lived abroad from an early age, but never forgot where he came from. He learned to appreciate Chopin from his friend and fellow musician, Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), and made his works the centrepiece of a comprehensive repertoire. “When I play Chopin”, he said, “I know that I speak directly to people’s hearts.” Invited to play at the inauguration of the United Nations in 1945, he famously interrupted his programme, stood up and pointed to the absence of the Polish flag before pounding out “Jeszcze Polska nie zginela” and bringing the audience to their feet. In 1964, at the height of the Cold War, he gave a legendary concert in Moscow which consisted entirely of Chopin’s works. I myself sat at Rubinstein’s feet on the stage in Paris in 1975, thinking that it would be his last concert. It wasn’t. Apart from adoring his skill as a pianist, I greatly admired his ability to celebrate his Polishness and his Jewishness without a hint of contradiction.
Marta Argerich, (born in 1941 in Buenos Aires), has been acclaimed the most accomplished pianist of all time. She won the International Chopin Competition in 1965. But when asked to talk about Chopin, she was lost for words. “Chopin was a genius”, she replied, “What more can I say ?”
The Russian-born Vladimir Ashkenazy (born in Gorky in 1942), who is a baptised Orthodox Christian, won the second prize at the International Chopin Competition in 1955, and henceforth gave Chopin a central place in his music-making. In fact, he has made recordings of every single piece that Chopin ever composed. Like Rubinstein, he has a broad range, but has repeatedly returned to Chopin with interpretations, which the New York Times has called “passionate and fiery”. He has a special rapport with Chopin’s later works. “Towards the end of his life”, he says, “[Chopin] discovered more potency in his mind and soul, and, going deeper into his intimate expression, embraced all Humanity.”
The Milanese, Maurizio Pollini (also born in 1942), won the Chopin Competition in 1960. On that occasion, Arthur Rubinstein, who was Chairman of the Jury, remarked: “that boy can play the piano better than any of us.” Pollini went on to a career in which meticulous precision received preference over displays of emotion. Some critics observed that his ‘emotional conservatism’ reflected Chopin’s own approach; others said the opposite.
Krystian Zimerman, (born in 1956 in Zabrze, Poland), won the Chopin Competition in 1975, and, like the others, added the full Romantic and Classical repertoire to his achievements. And, like Paderewski, he has not hesitated to wade into politics. Famously, in 2009, he vowed from the rostrum not to return to the USA so long as G.W.Bush was president. Three decades earlier, in 1982, he was appearing in a televised concert in East Berlin at a time when Poland was gripped by martial law and when Lech Walesa’s Solidarity union had been suppressed. As he mounted the stage, the watching censors noticed that he was wearing a Solidarity badge in his label. So the screen went blank. When the picture returned, he was sitting on the piano stool preparing to perform, shorn of his lapel badge. He adjusted the seat, looked up to the ceiling to gain concentration, looked down to place his feet on the pedals, then quietly pulled up his jacket sleeves to reveal a magnificent pair of Solidarity cuff-links.
The Argentinian-born Daniel Barenboim, who is exactly the same age as Ashkenazy and Pollini, never entered the International Chopin Competition, but has talked about Chopin almost as often as he has played him. One of the most attractive of musicians with a deep belief in music’s power to heal and reconcile, he was married for twenty years to the incomparable English cellist, Jacqueline du Pré, and freely embraces Chopin as “the pianists’ pianist”. “Chopin inspires them … to sound as if the music is emanating from them as light from a candle”. “Chopin has taught me how better to understand ‘the beast’”, (meaning the piano). Speaking in Italian, he once tried to explain Chopin’s power by talking of his “Fiertà di ritmo”, his “Pride of Rhythm”, adding that it was assertive but never aggressive or fascistic. To explain the troublesome rubato, he uses the metaphor of a tree, whose trunk stays “solid and immobile”, but “whose leaves can rustle in the wind”. Moreover, he fully grasps the special attraction which Chopin’s music has for Poles. “I had this concert in Vienna,” he recounts, “and afterwards this man comes up and announces that he is the Polish Ambassador to Austria, and that Chopin makes him proud to be Polish.” He makes a gesture of amazement. When he plays Beethoven or Ravel, no-one tells him they are proud to be German or French. “No”, he says, “this is something special; Chopin belongs to them.“ Here, if I may interject, Poles love Chopin not just for the Polish melodies, (which are just one element among many), but because they identify with melody produced from pain.
Yet Barenboim’s commentaries can also illustrate how difficult it is to grasp the nuances of Chopin’s artistry. He has posted a charming video, “Five minutes with Chopin”, which presents the resplendent Ballade Nr 1 in G-minor, that starts with a meandering introduction. “Beethoven never meandered anywhere”, he comments. “but this is a promenade, a walk, a leisurely stroll through his private world.” What a lovely idea! Then a Frenchman writes in to point out that Ballade, meaning “a poetic work” is not the same word as Balade, meaning a walk or stroll. [from the Piano Street Magazine, 25 February 2017]
For nearly one hundred years, the International Chopin Competition (ICC) in Warsaw has supplied the gold standard for judging performances of Chopin’s works. First launched in 1927, it embodies the link between Poland and Poland’s favourite composer, and, being organised on a five-year cycle has completed eighteen editions to date.
The ICC puts over a hundred candidates though a gruelling three-stage programme over three weeks, until ten pianists are selected for the three-day final. Three separate juries oversee results in the early rounds, until the main Jury of 15 or 16 assembles to make the final decisions. By convention, the Jury includes former winners and is chaired by a Polish musician.
The Competition started at a time when Chopin had lost a bit of his appeal in Poland. Its founder, Jerzy Zurawiew noted: “I would frequently hear that Chopin was excessively Romantic, that he enervated the soul and weakened the psyche.” In the wake of independence, the Polish intelligentsia were reacting against the phrenetic national enthusiasms surrounding the Republic’s re-birth. / To some people’s surprise, therefore, every one of the first four editions of the ICC were won by pianists from the Soviet Union. Lev Oborin (1927) was a typical product of the well-vetted Soviet cultural establishment, winning both a Stalin Prize and two Orders of Lenin. Alexander Uninsky (1932) from Kiev, was a Soviet Ukrainian who later defected to the USA. He was awarded first place through the toss of a coin; his rival, cruelly demoted to second place, was the blind Hungarian, Imre Ungar. Yakov Zak (1937), a graduate of the Odessa Conservatory, later achieved the status of ‘People’s Artist of the USSR’. After the War, there were no more spins of the coin, and Bella Davidovich (1949) from Baku, shared the first prize with a Polish pianist. In due course, she emigrated legally from the Soviet Union and taught at the Juliard School in New York.
Polish pianists came into their own in the post-war period. Following Halina Czerny-Stefanska (1949), Adam Harasiewicz stormed to first place in 1955, on the eve of Poland’s political ‘Thaw’. The very first record that I ever received from a Polish correspondent was of Harasiewicz playing Chopin. After him, to the end of the century, young Poles regularly came to the fore – Marta Sosinska, Piotr Paleczny, Krzysztof Jablonski.
Controversy abounded alongside the abundant talent. In 1980, the flamboyant Yugoslav pianist Ivo Pogorelić split the Jury down the middle when eliminated before the final. Martha Agerich resigned in protest. Another juror despaired: “Candidates must pay attention to the music.”
In the 21st Century, with the exception of the phenomenal Rafal Blechacz (2005), the spotlight began to swing away from European contestants, and onto their counterparts from the Far East. Chopin was globalised. The 18-year old Yundi Lee from China won in 2000; two South Koreans, Dong-Hyek and Dong-Min, reached the podium in 2005; and in 2015, when I had the honour of appearing among the patrons, the top position was taken by another Korean, Seong-Jin Cho. In the most recent XVII Edition of the Competition, postponed by the pandemic to 2021, the winner was a Chinese Canadian, Bruce Xiaoyu Liu.
Had Fryderyk Chopin been alive, or watching the Competition from a heavenly perch, he would not have objected to the changing fashions. He was very definitely a Polish patriot, deeply attached to the welfare of his native land, and a great inspiration to other patriots. But he was no narrow bigot. He moved in international circles, which he loved and admired. His request to have his heart returned to Poland after his death may be seen as an act of belated piety. Thanks to his sister, who honoured the request, his heart now rests in the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, across the street from his old home.
During his Parisian exile, Chopin fretted not just about the fate of his homeland, but equally about the wider threats that were gathering. He lost several good friends in the Russo-Polish War of 1830-31, and others were deported to Siberia and Central Asia, into which Russia was steadily expanding. He keenly regretted have once played for the Tsar, Alexander I, and having received a present from him.
Special shame and anger would have been generated had Chopin known of the fate of his grand piano, that he had left behind in Warsaw. He had given the instrument to his sister Izabela, who, on marrying, took it with her to an apartment in the Zamoyski Palace. A quarter of a century later, during the January Rising, Russian troops ransacked the palace and the apartment, heaved the piano up to the window, and cast it out, smashing it into a hundred pieces on the pavement below. Cyprian Kamil Norwid wrote a poem (Chopin’s Grand Piano) about it:
„Over here, Frederick, look. This is Warsaw
Under a wild-blazing star
Strangely bright.
Just look, parish organs, look at your nest
Elsewhere, old patrician houses
Like a commonwealth,
Pavements of squares, deaf and grey,
And in the cloud King Sigismund’s sword.
Look! … From alley to alley
Caucasian horses leap out
Like swallows before a storm,
Dashing ahead of their regiments
Hundreds of them, hundreds.
The building caught fire, died down, and
Flared up again. And under the wall
I see the foreheads of mourning widows
Pushed back by rifle-butts.
Again, blinded by the smoke, I see
As it passed the pillars of the porch
A coffin-like object, which
They heaved until it smashed and crashed.
Your piano!”
Need one talk of Bucha and Mariupol ?
Yet, as Norwid well knew, Chopin the patriot was also a man of harmony and healing. He was claimed by two countries, but, as Socrates said of himself, “a citizen of neither Athens nor Sparta”.
He would have welcomed the fact that his music is practised in Russia, venerated in Japan, adored in America. He was, in Norwid’s words, “a Varsovian by birth, a Pole by heart, and, by virtue of his talent, a citizen of the world.”
Norman Davies, April 2022
Cover photo: Maria Wodzińska, Portrait of Fryderyk Chopin, National Museum in Warsaw
