Pianists and Their Composers: Chopin

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

The music of Frédéric Chopin is perennially popular – it has never lost its universal appeal and Chopin remains one of the greatest composers for the piano. Virtuosic, imaginative, and emotionally profound, Chopin’s music offers pianists a wealth of expressivity, requiring a combination of superior technique, which always serves the music (rather than as an end in itself), refined touch, a beautiful cantabile (singing) tone, highly nuanced dynamic shading, supple phrasing and rubato, and an appreciation of the interior architecture of this multi-layered music. Chopin is also symbolic of Poland, the country of his birth, whose musical idioms are evident in almost all his music, most obviously, the Mazurkas and Polonaises.

Frédéric Chopin

When asked, the great Chopin player Arthur Rubinstein could not explain why Chopin’s music spoke to him, but like the music of J.S. Bach (which Chopin greatly admired and studied), it expresses universal humanity which, combined with a certain vulnerability, speaks to so many of us, and on many different levels.

Arthur Rubinstein

Arthur Rubinstein

“When the first notes of Chopin sound through the concert hall there is a happy sign of recognition. All over the world men and women know his music. They love it. They are moved by it. When I play Chopin I know I speak directly to the hearts of people.”

An unrivalled authority and one of the greatest interpreters of the music of Chopin, Rubinstein brought great dignity and refinement to the music, avoided unnecessary mannerisms and sentimentality, and revealed the structural logic of Chopin’s writing. His playing is memorable for its elegant vocal phrasing, beauty of tone, and natural yet sophisticated shaping.

Arthur Rubinstein Plays Chopin’s Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op.53 

Dinu Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti playing at his last recital © Michel Meusy

“A master of the keyboard” (Harold C Schonberg), Dinu Lipatti was the pupil of an older Chopin master, Alfred Cortot.

Lipatti’s immaculate performances of the waltzes, in particular, are spontaneous, light and nimble, lyrical and suitably dancing, with subtle rubato and great charm.

Maria João Pires

Maria João Pires © classicosdosclassicos.mus.br

“It’s very inner music and very deep,” Maria João Pires has said of Chopin. For her, he is “the deep poet of music”. That depth is really evident in Pires’ playing of the Nocturnes – intimate, refined and passionate, her interpretations eschew drawing room night-time sentimentality and capture all the drama and emotional intensity of these much-loved pieces.

Maurizio Pollini

Maurizio Pollini

Described by one critic as “the greatest Chopin player to have emerged from Italy since the Second World War”, Maurizio Pollini’s association with Chopin goes right back to the beginning of his professional career when he won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw when he was just 18. His unsentimental, cultivated interpretations are notable for their clarity of expression, perfectly judged poetry, and close attention to the bel canto melodic lines which make Chopin’s music so immediately appealing.

Alfred Cortot

Alfred Cortot © Commentary

Cortot is one of the most celebrated Chopin interpreters, combining flawless technique with a deep appreciation of the structure, voicing, and textures of Chopin’s music. His recordings are acclaimed to this day, and his detailed, annotated editions of Chopin’s music remain highly prized among pianists and teachers.

Janina Fialkowska

Janina Fialkowska

Hailed by her mentor Arthur Rubinstein as “a born Chopin interpreter”, Polish-Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska captures the soul of Chopin, in particular in her performances of the Mazurkas, works which reveal Chopin’s patriotism and innermost sentiments towards his homeland. Fialkowska is sensitive to both the humble, peasant origins of the Mazurka and Chopin’s elevation of the genre into concert pieces. She really captures the poetry, poignancy, and whimsical emotions of these Polish folk dances, and her rubato is perfectly judged, especially important in these pieces where suppleness of pace lends greater emphasis to the emotional depth of the music.

A new piece by Chopin has been discovered after almost 200 years

28 October 2024, 13:09 | Updated: 29 October 2024, 10:53

Chopin. Picture: Alamy

By Will Padfield

Star pianist Lang Lang has given the first performance of the previously unheard Chopin waltz. 

An unknown waltz by Frédéric Chopin has been discovered in a library in New York, leading to an outpouring of excitement across the classical music world.

According to the New York Times, Robinson McClellan was sorting through a collection of cultural memorabilia in the vault of the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan when he found a pockmarked manuscript the size of an index card with a distinctive name written on the top write corner: Chopin.

He shared a photo of his discovery with Jeffrey Kallberg, a leading Chopin scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

“My jaw dropped,” Kallberg told the Times. “I knew I had never seen this before.” 

After a thorough analysis of the paper, ink, handwriting and musical style, the Morgan Museum has concluded that the work is indeed an unknown waltz by the great Polish composer. The momentous discovery is the first of its kind in more than half a century.

Frederic Chopin by Wodzinska. Picture: Alamy

As reported in the New York Times, the manuscript is dated between 1830 and 1835, when Chopin was in his early 20s, and the music differs in many ways from the composer’s usual style.

Though believed to be complete, the work is shorter than Chopin’s other waltzes – only 48 measures long with a repeat, or about 80 seconds. The piece, in the key of A minor, has unusual dynamic markings, including a triple forte, signifying maximum volume, near the start.

Star pianist Lang Lang has given the first performance of the work. Picture: Getty

The star pianist Lang Lang, who has recently recorded the waltz for the Times at Steinway Hall in Manhattan has said the work felt like Chopin to him. The jarring opening, he said, evokes the harsh winters of the Polish countryside.

“This is not the most complicated music by Chopin,” he told the publication, “but it is one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine.”

Watch the first performance via The New York Times here.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) “I Tell My Piano the Things I Used to Tell You”

by Georg Predota, Interlude

As we commemorate the passing of Frédéric Chopin on 17 October 1849, we are once again reminded that he was one of the greatest pianists the world has ever known. But what is more, Chopin also left the finest body of music for his instrument. “In my music,” he once remarked, “one can divine the restlessness of the artist.”

Chopin’s romantic intensity was amply reflected in his music, which combined a gift for melody, an adventurous harmonic sense, an intuitive understanding of formal design, and a brilliant piano technique. He started his career as a pianist but abandoned concert life early on to explore the expressive and technical characteristics of the instrument. Chopin, more so than any other composer of his day, went on a journey of infinite discovery. 

Formative Years

Frédéric Chopin in 1849

The biography of Chopin’s early years is pretty well established, as he was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw. He clearly was a child prodigy and started giving public concerts at the age of 7. Remarkably, around this time, he also started to compose by focusing on polonaises, variation sets, and rondos. The Chopin scholar Jim Samson writes, “these works show the influence of the brilliant style of post-Classical pianism associated with composers such as Hummel, Weber, Moscheles, and Kalkbrenner.” 

The young composer managed in a very short time to assimilate many of the standard gestures and figuration, and he already created pieces of considerable accomplishments. It has often been suggested that Chopin’s unique sound world emerged fully formed from the start, yet much of his idiomatic figurations are closely modelled on common devices used by pianist-composers. The young Chopin was clearly preparing himself for a career on the concert platforms and salons of Europe’s cultural capitals. 

Warsaw

Manor house in Żelazowa Wola, Chopin’s birthplace

The young pianist-composer also looked toward the traditional music of the Mazovian plains of central Poland, encoding the rhythmic and modal patterns and the characteristic melodic intonations in his early mazurkas. Although he had some personal contacts with Polish folk music, Chopin mediated the genre through salon dance pieces and the world of the traditional folk ensemble. As Samson writes, “At a very early stage, Chopin made this genre his own, and even the earliest efforts project the unmistakable character of the mature mazurka.” 

To complete his years of apprenticeship, Chopin started a process of radically reworking the forms, procedures, and materials drawn from the Viennese Classical composers. We find his first Piano Sonata Op. 4 and the Piano Trio Op. 8. However, the two major works of the last Warsaw periods are the piano concertos, the first extended compositions that established a place in the repertory.

A critic commented on Op. 11 as follows, “On the whole, the work was brilliant and well written but without any particular originality or depth except for the main theme and middle second of the Rondo, which display a unique charm in their peculiar combination of melancholy and light-hearted passages.” 

Paris

Henryk Siemiradzki: Chopin concert

By the time Chopin arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1831, the primary genres of his oeuvre, the mazurka, nocturne, etude, and waltz, were already in place. The mazurka, in particular, now took on some added meaning. Chopin claimed the genre for art music, “investing the salon dance piece with the complexity and sophistication that immediately transcended its peasant origins.”

It becomes a stylised folk idiom, and as Jim Samson writes, “it is fitting that his nationalism should have expressed thus, through the renovation of a simple dance piece rather than through the more usual channels of opera and programmatic reference.”  

Chopin’s engagement with an expressive aesthetic emerged most prominently in the piano nocturne. In fact, it was the genre that launched Chopin’s entire musical career in the fashionable salons of the city. This glimpse into the highly expressive world of Chopin’s music was greatly facilitated by the development of the sustaining pedal, “enabling those wide-spread arpeggiations supporting an ornamental melody which we recognise today as the archetype of the style.”

As such, Chopin was able to draw uniquely delicate and seductive sonorities, extraordinary bel canton elaboration of melody, and rich harmonic subtlety from the instrument. Chopin set the standard with his Op. 9, but already in the Op. 15, it becomes clear that the title “nocturne” could be attached to music of highly varied formal and generic schemes. 

Chopin composed his set of 12 Etudes Op. 10 in Warsaw, Vienna, and his early Paris years. This major achievement turned mundane and boring finger exercises into a veritable art form. Chopin changed the entire meaning of what an etude should actually be. Of course, each one explores a different pianist problem area like arpeggios, scales, crossing fingers and hands, and all kinds of finger busters, but these pianistical problems are encased within musical shapes and ideas that transcended the previous meaning.

The significance of the Chopin Op. 10 is twofold. Chopin clearly transcended the brilliant style and directly confronted virtuosity while showcasing and encapsulating his unique musical style. Chopin achieved a balance between technical and artistic aims, or as Robert Schumann put it, “imagination and technique share dominion side by side.” 

Consolidation

Chopin’s Polonaise autograph score

Chopin’s piano music acquired its characteristic sound through the mazurkas, nocturnes, and etudes. As his personal style matured, Chopin sought to place his conception of melody, figuration, and harmony into more extended forms. We find the result in the 2 Polonaises Op. 26, the first Scherzo, Op. 20, and the first Ballade, Op. 23. For each of these three genres, Chopin followed up with three additional opuses. We also must mention the 24 Preludes of Op. 28, the first set of pieces by that name, which are presented as a cycle of self-contained pieces, each of which can stand alone.

Chopin’s handwriting on his Nocturnes, Op. 62

While Chopin had consolidated some of the genres established during the Vienna and early Paris years in his pre-Nohant years, his relationship with George Sand gave the music a new tranquillity. Working primarily in Nohant during the summer, Chopin composed more deliberately and with a sense of growing self-doubt. Scholars suggest that the early 1840s “have often been described as a turning point in his creative evolution, marked by a renewed interest in counterpoint, by a more sparing and structurally focused ornamentation and by a strengthening command of structure.” 

Eloquent Simplicity

Chopin’s last piano displayed at the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw

Chopin had suffered from serious and chronic health problems throughout his short life. In his teens, he suffered from frequent respiratory infections and countless episodes of bronchitis and laryngitis. He suffered through a bout of influenza in 1837, and although his doctor assured him that he was not suffering from tuberculosis, Chopin’s health rapidly deteriorated after 1840, with the composer weighing only 45 kilograms.

An army of doctors tended to his physical ailments, including cough, fever, painful wrists and ankles, haemoptysis, hematemesis and ankle oedema. Chopin’s condition deteriorated further at the beginning of October 1849, and he died on the morning of October 17, 1849, “after having been unconscious for 24 hours.” Despite his constant health struggles, “Chopin reached a new plateau of creative achievement, marked by an eloquent simplicity which severely excludes the extraneous and the gratuitously ornamental.”

11 October: Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Was Premiered

by Georg Predota

Frédéric Chopin, 1873

On 22 September 1830, Frédéric Chopin invited all of musical Warsaw to his home for a dress rehearsal of his E-minor Concerto. The rehearsal was enormously successful and a press review announced, “I hasten to bring a piece of good news to all friends of music and of native talent: Frédéric Chopin has completed his second grand piano Concerto. It is a work of genius, original, gracefully conceived with an abundance of imaginative ideas and perfect orchestration. The performance was masterfully executed… and we must add that Mr. Chopin will rob the Warsaw public of great pleasure if he departs without having publically produced this second Concerto.” Glowing accolades none withstanding, let us clear up some possible confusion. The referenced E-minor Concerto was the first of Chopin’s two piano concertos to be published, and it was subsequently given the opus number 11. It was composed immediately after the premiere of the F-minor concerto, which took place on 17 March 1830. This composition was published as his Piano Concerto No. 2 and given the opus number 21. As such, the E-minor concerto was composed and performed second but published first. The public premiere performance took place on 11 October 1830 at the Teatr Narodowy (National Theatre) in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as the soloist.

Chopin playing piano © reddit

Chopin writes about his performance, “I was not the slightest bit nervous and I played as I play when I am alone. It went well. The hall was full. Goerner’s Symphony came first. Then My highness played the first allegro of the E minor Concerto, which I reeled off on a Streicher piano. The bravos were deafening… It seems to me that I have never been so much at ease when playing with an orchestra. The audience enjoyed my piano playing.” Rising political tensions prevented extended press reviews, and the local newspaper merely describes it as “one of the most sublime of all musical works,” but hardly the ecstatic tribute paid to the F-minor concerto earlier that year. Chopin performed the “Rondo” of the E-minor in Breslau 14 days later, and wrote to his family that the Germans had declared, “How light his touch as a pianist was.” However, Chopin complained, “that there was not a word written about the composition itself.” One local critic, however, “praised the novelty of the form, saying that he had never yet heard anything quite like it. “Perhaps” Chopin opined, “he understood better than any of them.” And a Munich performance in 1831 prompted the reviewer to write, “A lovely delicacy along with a beautiful and individualistic interpretation of the themes was characteristic of his cultivated style. On the whole, the work was brilliant and well written but without any particular originality or depth except for the main theme and middle second of the Rondo, which display a unique charm in their peculiar combination of melancholy and light-hearted passages.”

François-Joseph Fétis

Once the E-minor concerto had made its way to Paris, François-Joseph Fétis, one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century writes, “M. Chopin performed a concerto that caused as much astonishment as pleasure because of the novelty of its melodic ideas as well as its figuration, modulations, and form in general. His melodies are soulful, his keyboard writing imaginative, and originality prevails throughout. But mixed in with the qualities I have just identified are such weaknesses as over-rich modulations and a disordered succession of phrases, so that sometimes one had the impression of listening to an improvisation rather than composed music.” These early reviews decidedly colored the reception of the E-minor Concerto in the early twentieth century.

Frédéric Kalkbrenner, 1829

James Huneker dismissed it claiming “not Chopin at his very best,” and specifically writing on the E-minor he observed that “the first movement is too long, too much in one set of keys, and the working out section too much in the nature of a technical study.” And Donald Francis Tovey writes in the 1930’s that “the first movement of the E minor is built on a suicidal plan,” suggesting that it lacked “an essential element of harmonic contract and was therefore deficient from a structural point of view.” Critics initially might also have been guided by the dedication of the E-minor concerto to Frédéric Kalkbrenner, who was after all in the running to become Chopin’s teacher in Paris. However, today we understand that Chopin used virtuosity of differentiated intensity, inviting fluid interpretation and expression from his most technical writing. As has been observed, the E-minor concerto derives its “energy and momentum not from the contract of tonal centers, but from the contrast of lyric and virtuosic sections in the piano writing.”

Spring Waltz (Mariage d'Amour) Chopin - Tuscany 4K

17,736,331 views Oct 19, 2022 #springwaltz #halidonmusic #chopin

Enjoy this scenic relaxation film in 4K of Tuscany, Italy while listening to the calming and relaxing piece of classical piano music. Spring Waltz, attributed to Frédéric Chopin was in fact composed by Paul de Senneville under the name "Mariage d'Amour". Relaxing, calm piano music & the beauty of nature in 4K. Best classical music of all time.

3 Heartbreaking piano performance made audience cry, Pressler play Chopin

2,608,565 views Feb 11, 2024

0:00 1 Menahem Pressler play Chopin Nocturne in C sharp minor 4:40 2 Vladimir Horowitz play Schumann Traumerei in Moscow 1986, this is his first time back to Russia in 60 years after he left Russia 7:08 3 Born Blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii played at Carnegie Hall his own composition "Elegy for the Victims of the Tsunami of March 11, 2011 in Japan"

Composers Like Chopin: Ten Composers to Check Out

By Emily E.Hogstad, Interlude

Delicacy. Poignancy. Romance. These are just a few of the words often associated with Frédéric Chopin‘s timeless compositions for piano.

Frédéric Chopin © ClassicFM

That said, Chopin’s music doesn’t have a monopoly on those adjectives.

Today, we’re looking at ten works by ten composers who, just like Chopin, understood the piano’s expressive power…while forging their own creative identities, too.

If you’re looking for music like Chopin’s, here are ten suggestions for your playlist:

John Field (1782-1837)

Pianist and composer John Field was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1782.

He studied with Muzio Clementi in London and toured Europe with him, finally settling in St. Petersburg in 1802.

John Field, 1820

In his late twenties, he began experimenting musically. He started writing short pieces for solo piano featuring an arpeggiated accompaniment in the left hand and a highly chromatic melody in the right hand. These pieces would usually be poetic and melancholy in nature. He called them “Nocturnes.” And so a new genre of piano music was born, that Chopin would later perfect.

You can hear Field’s influence in Chopin’s nocturnes.

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) 

Maria Szymanowska was born Marianna Agata Wołowska in Warsaw in 1789.

Maria Szymanowska

In 1810, she married a man named Józef Szymanowski, a wealthy landowner, and she also made her public debut as a pianist.

Many women musicians of this era gave up their careers once they got married, but not Szymanowska. Ultimately, she split from her husband and began touring Europe, spending a great deal of time in St. Petersburg. (And in case you’re wondering, yes, she did cross paths with Field!) She died there in 1831 during a cholera epidemic.

Musicologist Sławomir Dobrzański writes, “Szymanowska’s musical style is parallel to the compositional starting point of Frédéric Chopin; many of her compositions had an obvious impact on Chopin’s mature musical language.”

Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857)

Glinka was born in Russia in 1804. He attended a school in St. Petersburg for children of the nobility and took three lessons from John Field while there.

Portrait of Mikhail Glinka, 1840

When he became an adult, he joined the Foreign Office, but by night, he kept pursuing music. He ultimately developed a great passion for expressing Russian nationalism in music, and encouraging a specifically Russian school of music.

Most of his best-known music dates from after that revelation. However, the music from his young dilettante days – like this Nocturne from 1828 – feels similar in some ways to Chopin’s and certainly reveals Field’s influence.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) 

Liszt and Chopin met at the latter’s first Parisian concert in 1832. They moved in the same aristocratic Parisian circles and their lives shared important themes, chief among them their devotion to their respective homelands (Hungary and Poland).

Franz Liszt, 1847

They respected each other a great deal, and Liszt was deeply saddened by Chopin’s early death in 1849. Liszt went so far as to write a biography in memory of his friend.

It is believed that Liszt’s third Consolation in D-flat major is modeled after Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27, No. 2. This piece by Liszt was published in 1850, the year after Chopin’s death.  

Clara Schumann (1819-1896) 

Clara Wieck, who became known as Clara Schumann after her marriage to composer Robert Schumann, began championing the works of Chopin when she was a child prodigy touring across Europe.

Robert and Clara Schumann

In 1832, the same year that Liszt and Chopin met, a young Clara Wieck heard Chopin in concert. She never forgot the experience.

Clara Wieck Schumann was always excited to play any new music that Chopin would write. She continued playing Chopin for decades after his death at important and prestigious venues, helping to ensure that he would stay in the repertoire. She ultimately emerged as one of the greatest pianists of her generation, and she brought Chopin’s music with her on that journey.

When Chopin came to visit her in 1836, she played this Chopinesque nocturne for him, as well as a variety of other pieces. He was delighted.

Thomas Tellefsen (1823-1874) 

Pianist and composer Thomas Tellefsen was born in Trondheim, Norway, in 1823.

As a young man, it became his dream to study with Chopin, and so he left his native Norway for Paris.

Thomas Tellefsen

Unfortunately for Tellefsen, however, not just anyone could study with Chopin; he was in high demand as a teacher.

Luckily, in 1844, Chopin’s partner, authoress George Sand, put in a good word for Tellefsen, and Chopin accepted him as a student. Chopin was impressed by his talent, and eventually, the two men became friends and traveling companions.

Chopin viewed Tellefsen as a major pedagogical heir, tasking him with writing a pianoforte method based on what he’d learned. However, if Tellefsen did complete it, no record of it exists.

What does exist are his compositions in a style a la Chopin.

Carl Filtsch (1830-1845) 

Carl Filtsch was born in present-day Romania in 1830. He was a child prodigy, and his family relocated to Paris when he was eleven so he could take lessons from Chopin.

Chopin didn’t teach children, but he made an exception for Filtsch. Indeed, he started teaching him three lessons a week.

Carl Filtsch

Filtsch eventually began touring Europe to acclaim, but he died of tuberculosis in Venice when he was only fifteen years old.

One of Chopin’s friends wrote in 1843 that, “My God! What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has…It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way.”

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Play

Chopin died when Fauré was only a few years old, but something about Chopin’s brand of poignancy and elegance spoke to the Frenchman. When Fauré began writing his own nocturnes in the mid-1870s, he reached back to an earlier generation for inspiration.

John Singer Sargent: Gabriel Fauré, 1896

Fauré, like Chopin, was obsessed with writing for piano. “In piano music, there’s no room for padding – one has to pay cash and make it consistently interesting. It’s perhaps the most difficult genre of all,” he wrote.

His first nocturne, dating from ca. 1875, features an opening theme that immediately recalls to mind Chopin’s Prelude in E-minor.

Even when the nocturne wanders into more experimental harmonies or rhythms, a Chopinesque character still remains.

Juliusz Zarębski (1854-1885) 

Juliusz Zarębski was born in 1854 in present-day Ukraine, a country that in the past had been under Polish rule. His hometown Zhytomyr is between Kyiv (two hours away by car) and Warsaw (nine hours).

Juliusz Zarębski

Zarębski studied in Rome and St. Petersburg as a young man, taking lessons from Liszt and setting to music work by poet Adam Mickiewicz (who, interestingly, was Maria Szymanowska’s son-in-law). He spent formative time in places that were deeply influenced by Chopin’s own influences, and it shows.

Tragically, his life path followed Chopin’s in a grim way: he became ill with tuberculosis and died at the age of 31. He left behind a catalog of lovely music, perfect for a Chopin listener looking for something fresh.

Rosemary Brown (1916-2001)

Rosemary Brown was a psychic medium from twentieth century Britain who claimed to channel the works of the great composers.

Rosemary Brown

The story of Rosemary Brown’s musical career is odd and fascinating. To make a long story short, Brown said that she could communicate with dead composers. (For what it’s worth, she claimed that Chopin was horrified by television.)

During their interactions, the composers dictated pieces to her in a variety of ways. She said that Chopin wrote this one.

Is this piece really Chopin composing from the afterlife? Well, frankly, deciding that is a bit beyond our pay grade, but you’re free to believe whatever you want! If nothing else, it’s a great story.

Conclusion

Regardless of what you think about the work of Rosemary Brown, here’s the truth: Chopin didn’t need a psychic medium to speak through the music of those who came after him.

Many composers shared his artistic priorities and delicate touch and wrote incredibly poignant, romantic pieces of Chopinesque music that we can still enjoy today. We hope you enjoy our picks!