Chopin 2019

February 25, 2019.  Chopin.  Frédéric Chopin was born on March 1^st of 1810.  Here’s a brief sketch of Chopin’s first 20 years.  He was born in Żelazowa Wola, not far from Warsaw, in what then was the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, created by Napoleon three years earlier (the Duchy would disappear five years later, following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, with that part of Poland reverting back to Russia).  His father, Nicolas Chopin, was French, his mother, Tekla Justyna Krzyżanowska, – Polish.  The first 20 years Frédéric lived in Poland, mostly in Warsaw, where his family moved when Nicolas received an appointment at the newly-established Warsaw Lyceum.  Frédéric was a child prodigy (“Second Mozart,” the local press called him), both as a pianist and as a composer: a lithograph of a polonaise he wrote at the age of eight, survives to this day.  He studied composition and the piano with the composer Józef Elsner, then entered the Warsaw Conservatory, where he also studied the organ.  The organ played its role, even though Chopin never composed for this instrument: at the time, several attempts were made to combine the organ and the piano; one of these hybrids was called the “aeolopantaleon.”  Young Chopin played this unusual instrument at a concert attended by Tsar Alexander I of Russia; the Tsar was very impressed and presented the 15-year-old Frédéric with a diamond ring.  Even though the Chopins were well established, Frédéric felt stifled: compared to the European capitals or St.Petersburg, Warsaw was musically quite provincial.  In November of 1830 he went on a European tour; the first stop was in Vienna.  One week after his arrival he had learned of the Warsaw uprising against the Russians.  Frédéric stayed in Vienna for half a year; in July of 1831 he left for Paris which would become his home for the rest of his life: he was never to see Poland again.  By then, Chopin’s reputation as a brilliant pianist had been firmly established, but his creative genius was to flourish in France.

Two prominent 20^th century pianists were born this week; both (obviously) played Chopin.  Dame Myra Hess was born (likely) in London on this day in 1890.  Already prominent as a keen interpreter of the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, she became famous for establishing lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery during the War.  Concerts took place Monday through Friday, no matter what.  When London was being bombed by the Germans, the concerts were moved to a different, more secure, room.  Almost 2000 concerts were presented, and Myra Hess played 150 of them.  The Chicago-based free Dame Myra Hess concerts, which take place every Wednesday at 12:15 every week of the year, where established by the International Music Foundation in honor of that great British pianist.  Here’s Myra Hess playing The Grande valse brillante in E-flat major, Op. 18.  

Lazar Berman was born on February 26^th of 1930 into a Jewish family in Leningrad.  A child prodigy, he started playing piano at the age of two, and at four took part in a Leningrad “young talents” competition.  Later, he studied with Alexander Goldenweiser at the Moscow Conservatory.  In 1956 Berman won the Queen Elizabeth competition in Brussels and the Franz Liszt competition in Budapest.  Berman was persecuted by the Soviet musical authorities more than almost any artist: from 1959 till 1971 he was prohibited from playing outside of the country because he married a French girl (the marriage was very brief), and then, in 1980, he was banned again, when a “wrong” book was found in his luggage.  Berman was a phenomenal virtuoso (his Liszt recordings are stupendous), but partly for that reason the purely musical qualities of his playing were overlooked.  Here is Chopin’s Etude in A minor, Op 25, No. 11 in a live recording made in 1950.