The Chopin Project

For years one of the knocks on Chopin’s music is that he was a “ladies’ composer,” spinning out his piano pieces for the sighing, swooning denizens of Parisan salons, the result being that his remarkable compositions were often trivialized or marginalized.

According to the Cambridge Companion to Chopin, the composer hated the association:

“Chopin enjoyed elegant feminine company, but he had harsh views of the fawning of his ‘adoring women.’ He himself used the phrase ‘music for the ladies’, but unhappily he meant it disparagingly. Another association with the salon was the ’sentimental drawing room composer” - the ’superficial genius’ - and the appellation was encouraged by a self-imposed limitation of meidum, but the connotations of small forms, and by the description titles assigned to his music by publishers…”

One publisher in particular who drew Chopin’s ire was a London-based German entrepreneur named Christian Rudolph Wessel. As you can see by the cover page, above, (courtesy of the fantastic Chopin Early Editions site at the University of Chicago) the publisher issued Chopin’s marvelous Impromptu No. 2 in a series he called “Les Agrémans au Salon” — loosely translated as “Drawing-Room Trifles.” With “friends” like that….

Nowadays, Chopin’s Impromptus are a robust staple of the concert hall. Hear pianist Noel McRobbie perform Chopin’s Impromptu No. 2 in F-sharp Major, Op. 36, in a concert performance at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

Download the sheet music from the Piano Society web site.

Tags: Chopin Early Editions, Impromptus, Musicology, Noel McRobbie, publishers, sheet music

Chopin Biographer Arthur Hedley once wrote: “From the great Italian singers of the age [Chopin] learned the art of ’singing’ on the piano, and his nocturnes reveal the perfection of his cantabile style and delicate charm of ornamentation.”

Recent scholarship by some musicologists hear the song of a sorrowful Venetian gondolier (borrowed from Italian opera composer Giaocchino Rossini, whom Chopin greatly admired) in the undulating Nocturne in C minor, the 21st and final essay in the genre that Chopin perfected. It dates from 1847, just two years before Chopin’s death, but was not published until decades later.

Hear Chopin Project Artistic Director Arthur Greene perform Chopin’s haunting Mazurka No. 56 in C major in concert at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

Get the music at here at the pianosociety website.

Tags: Arthur Greene, Musicology, Nocturnes, Rossini

Today’s edition of Performance Today - the most popular classical-music show in the USA - will feature a performance from The Chopin Project: Chih-Long Hu’s live interpretation of Chopin’s Waltz in A-flat, Op. 69, no. 1 “L’Adieu”

Produced and distributed by American Public Media, Performance Today is broadcast on 245 public radio stations across the country and is heard by about 1.1 million people each week. Each station individually decides what time to air the program. You’ll also be able to hear the show on the Performance Today website (Program Archive July 9, 2008) until Tuesday, July 15th.

Tags: broadcasts, Chih-Long Hu, Performance Today

“In his Mazurkas, you get to know the very soul of Poland and Chopin never forgot his home land or the poor farmers singing the Mazurkas during the time of harvest.” All right, the Piano Society’s prose on Chopin’s 58 Mazurkas may be a bit purple, but it does appear that the Mazurkas are close to Chopin’s Polish soul. Esteemed pianist and scholar Charles Rosen has also declared the Mazurkas as Chopin’s “R & D Lab” - where some of the composer’s boldest harmonic experiments can be found.

Although this sprightly and march-like Mazurka in C major dates from Chopin’s younger years, (see this posting to discover what the “KK” designation means), it wasn’t published until 1870. The original published score (above) comes from the excellent Chopin Early Editions site maintained by the University of Chicago.

Hear pianist Noel McRobbie perform Chopin’s Mazurka No. 56 in C major in concert at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

Get the music at Sheet Music Plus.

Tags: Charles Rosen, early scores, Mazurkas, Noel McRobbie, Piano Society, University of Chicago

Decades before Maurice Ravel came along, Chopin also found inspiration in the old Spanish dance known as the Bolero, defined as “A Spanish dance and song, in moderate tempo and triple metre, popular at the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, often performed with guitar and castenets.” In fact, the Spanish Bolero was rythmically related to the polonaise of Chopin’s native country, and even Beethoven wrote a Bolero a solo … it’s one of his minor “without Opus” works, WoO 158.

Regardless of origin or inspiration, it’s one of Chopin’s more unusual works, dating from 1833. He tacked on an Introduction in C major that serves as an evocative attention-getter that sets up the uniquely Spanish-Polish Bolero that follows.

Hear pianist Xiaofeng Wu perform Chopin’s Introduction & Bolero in A, Op. 19 in concert at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

Get the music at Sheet Music Plus.

Tags: Beethoven, Bolero, rarities, Spain, Xiaofeng Wu

This delicate, haunting Waltz in another work that adds to the mystery and mastery of Chopin. This Waltz has long been a favorite of amateur pianists, as it’s one of the least difficult pieces of Chopin’s to play. Well, the NOTES may not be hard, but the FEELING? Rarely is this piece performed with such sensitivity, transparency and grace.

Hear Chopin Project pianist Christina Thayer perform Chopin’s Waltz in A minor.

Now, for the mystery part: There is a lot of confusion over the title and date of this Waltz. It was published after Chopin’s death, and therefore carries no opus number (It is not to be confused with the Waltz in A Minor, Op. 34, No. 2). In fact, the most popular published score didn’t appear until 1955! So as a result it can be harder to track down recordings and scores….so we’ve done it for you!

Click here to download the score to Chopin’s Waltz in A minor (B. 150).

Tags: Christina Thayer

“I am compelled to think about paving my way in the world as a pianist.” - Shortly after arriving in Paris Chopin penned those memorable words in a letter to his old Warsaw music teacher Józef Elsner. And one of the first pianistic roads Chopin paved in his own way was through the development of the Nocturne, a form more or less invented by the Irish composer John Field, but, quoting the Guild Music website: “it was Chopin who brought the genre to its perfection. In his Nocturnes, he displays his unique melodic gift (very much influenced by the bel canto operas of his time) and his extraordinary ability to renew the accompaniment.”

Chopin’s development of the Nocturne form really came into its own with the publication of his Three Nocturnes, Op. 15 in the early 1830’s. Today’s entry - The Nocturne in G minor, Op. 15, No. 3 - showcases Chopin’s incredible gift for opera-like melody at the beginning and end of the piece, contrasted by a fierce, fiery and virtuosic middle section.

Hear Chopin Project pianist Christina Thayer perform Chopin’s utterly original Nocturne In G minor, Op. 15, No. 3.

Ferdinand Hiller, dedicatee of Chopin’s Op. 15 Nocturnes

Chopin dedicated the Op. 15 Nocturnes to his friend and mentor Ferdinand Hiller, a German composer, conductor, and pianist whose own music has been almost totally forgotten, but whose name lives on as the dedicatee both of these Chopin masterworks as well as Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto.

Want to try playing it yourself? Download the sheet music here.

Read the Wikipedia entry here.

Read the Chopinmusic.net entry on the Nocturnes here.

Cross-posted from our companion daily blog site The Chopin Currency: By “Currency” we mean just how contemporary - and how powerfully it resonates in our own time, nearly 200 years since the composer’s birth.

This month we’re getting a compelling reminder of just how “current” Chopin’s music is from, of all places, MTV Networks, who commissioned this powerful and moving PSA/Web film called “None of Us Are Free” to raise awareness for disaster relief in Myanmar (a/k/a Burma). The film begins with Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48, No. 1 (as well as a bit of the Fantaisie-Impromptu at the end…)…to dramatic effect:

None Of Us Are Free- the Burma Film

Now that you’ve heard that snippet,

Hear pianist Polina Khatsko play this poignant Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48, No. 1 in a Chopin Project live performance at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

Want to play it yourself? Get the music here at the Sheet Music Archive.

Now, some details as to how Fryderyk C’s music got involved, courtesy of motiongrapher.com:

When and how the music was incorporated?
The music played a huge role in setting the tone and pacing of the piece. We knew that it would be huge in setting the right mood so it had to be perfect. We listened to a lot of tracks when we were cutting the first previz [sic] edits and when we heard Chopin’s nocturnes, we knew we found the right music. It had all the right elements, movement, and form.

Dante Nou who was working in—house with us took the two pieces we had roughly cut together and started tweaking them. Nate, our editor had some ideas about cadence and drawing out notes and keys and we just started fucking with it. By the time we finished the edit, the music had developed equally—it was then the foundation of what we took to Good Sounds. They replayed the original pieces and put their own loveliness in the mix—more sound design and tweaking, and by the time we finished the picture the music had finished as well.

There’s more about the “making of” the PSA on Gossipfeast.com as well, quoting from the MTV Press Release: “With the powerful melody from the feted virtuoso pianist Chopin, viewers will watch the beautiful red flowers float and dance towards Burmese soil.”

Tags: Burma, Disaster Relief, MTV

Chopinmusic.net calls this Grand Valse “one of Chopin’s most popular and glittering works.” We’re hard pressed to disagree.

Hear Chopin Project pianist Jei-Yern Ryu perform Chopin’s effervescent Waltz in E-flat, Op. 18.

Want to try playing it yourself? Download the sheet music here.

Tags: Jei-Yern Ryu

Smack-dab in the middle of Chopin’s Op. 25 Etudes lies this unique and memorable piece that is unlike any other Chopin creation. And one that has generated a considerable amount of ink over the decades.

Sometimes it’s called the “‘cello Etude,” due to the fact that the prominent melody is in the left hand, approximating the range of a cello. Others have called it “A Duet between a He and a She.” Or perhaps you prefer “Morbidly Elegaic?” Ballade-like? A Missing Nocturne?

Another school of thought says plainly: It’s an Etude. It’s supposed to help you with perfecting you piano technique. And the technique here is an exquisitely difficult phrasing and balance question - making the left hand carry the melody without being overpowered by the right — when the natural tendency is to go the other way.

Oh, and just to mess you up a little further, the left and right hand are playing quite independent musical lines that need to coincide at key moments.

So, for the final word, let’s transport you back to G.C. Ashton Jonson, author of the 1905 tome A Handbook to Chopin’s Works: (For the Use of Concert-Goers, Pianists, and Pianola Players):

Hear Chopin Project Artistic Director Arthur Greene perform Chopin’s unique Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 25, No. 7.

Read the Wikipedia entry here.

Read the Chopinmusic.net entry here.

Tags: Arthur Greene, Etudes, G.C. Ashton Jonson, Recordings