Tag: Chopin

  • Debussy on Chopin

    Chopin is the greatest of them all, for through the piano alone he discovered everything. — Claude Debussy P. Kildea, Chopin’s Piano, London, Allen Lane, 2018, p. 40.

  • Schumann on Chopin’s style

    Chopin can hardly write anything now but that we feel like calling out in the seventh or eighth measure, “It is by him!” – Robert Schumann, 1838 P. Kildea, Chopin’s Piano, London, Allen Lane, 2018, p. 43.

  • Jan Lisiecki on interpretation

    My approach is to sit with the score and make my decisions about what Andante means or what piano means in a certain context; often you go back to recordings and find that nobody’s ever really played it that way. You ask yourself ‘Why is that? Did I misread or misinterpret something? Or is this…

  • Chopin and counterpoint

    With regard to counterpoint in Chopin’s music, you might be interested in the conversation that Chopin had not long before his death with the painter Eugène Delacroix. Delacroix was one of a handful of quite intimate friends of Chopin’s. In his diary, he mentions how he had picked up Chopin in a carriage, and they…

  • Jan Lisiecki on Chopin

    Schumann described Chopin’s works as “cannons buried in flowers”.  Contained in Chopin’s music are painful moments, suffering, longing and much drama. Similarly to Mozart, the external impression may be one of pure beauty, elegance, exuberance or joy but, deep down, there is something else entirely, a sort of imprecise discomfort, a certain malaise. The contrast…

  • Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes

    Op. 9, no. 2 (Eb major)Op. 15, no. 3 (G minor)Op. 27, no. 1 (C-sharp minor)Op. 27, no. 2 (Db major) Chopin, while Polish by birth established his career in Paris, where his music was well received in intimate venues. In an article in Revue Musicale in 1832, François-Joseph Fétis wrote that Chopin “has found,…

  • Out of practice

    “All I have left is a long nose and a fourth finger out of practice.” Chopin, in Scotland, unable to visit his friend Julian in London because of ill health. Cited in: Zaluski, Iweo & Pamela (1993) The Scottish Autumn of Frederick Chopin. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, p.23.

  • Hogarth on Chopin

    “He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly and with such constant delicacy and refinement that the listener is not sensible of their real magnitude.  It is the exquisite delicacy, with the liquid mellowness of his tone, and the pearly roundness of his passages of rapid articulation which are the peculiar features of his…

  • Chopin and touch

    If a student played with excessive tone, Chopin would say “What was that? A dog barking?” Source: Carter, Gerard (2008) The Piano Book. Ashfield: Wensleydale Press, p.68

  • George Sand on Chopin’s compositional process

    “His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without forseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk when he was impatient to play it to himself. But then he began the most heart-rending labor I ever saw. It was a…

  • Liszt’s account of a performance by Chopin

    Franz Liszt described one of Chopin’s concerts in the Gazette musicale, May 2 1841. Last Monday, at eight o’clock in the evening, M. Pleyel’s rooms were brilliantly lighted up; numerous carriages brought incessantly to the foot of a staircase covered with carpet and perfumed with flowers the most elegant women, the most fashionable young men,…

  • A note about Chopin

    The following appeared in the Musical Times in 1913: An amusing story, for the truth of which we can vouch, comes to us from Toronto. An organist had drawn up the order of a Sunday service, and it was in type ready for printing, when the death of an important personage made a change necessary.…

  • The delicate nature of Chopin’s pianism

    Chopin gave a recital in the Gentlemen”s Concert Hall, Manchester, on 28 August 1848. The audience of 1,200 people was the largest Chopin had ever performed to, but Chopin’s delicate playing was not really suited to such a large venue. Conscious of this fact, Chopin requested that another pianist, George Osborne, who was also performing…

  • Chopin’s pianistic style

    While in London, Chopin frequently gave performances at soirées and matinées where he performed Nocturnes, Waltzes, Mazurkas and the Berceuse George Hogarth reported in the Daily News (10 July 1848): He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly and with such constant delicacy and refinement that the listener is not sensible of their real…