![]() ![]() Shortly after Frédéric’s birth, the family moved to Warsaw where his father had a teaching post.ġ816 Chopin had his first piano lessons from Adalbert Zwyny, a local all-round musician, and made his public debut at nine.ġ825 He became a piano student of Joseph Elsner, director of the Warsaw Conservatory. This duel nationality is reflected in Chopin’s music – the epic struggle of the Poles and the refined elegance of the French. His mother was the Countess’s lady in waiting, herself from Polish nobility. The seemingly inexhaustible variety of moods and ideas, endless supply of beautiful melodies and poised discrimination combine to make his oeuvre one of the high points of human creation.ġ810 The greatest of all Polish composers had a French father, Nicholas, who had gone to Poland as a young man and become a tutor to the family of Countess Skarbek at Zelazowa Wola. There are few works which do not seem genuinely inspired. George Sand described him going frantic trying to capture on paper what he had in his head, crossing out, destroying, beginning afresh, scratching out once more, re-working a single bar countless times. He was hypercritical of everything he wrote and what we hear played with such inevitability and apparently effortlessly flowing melody cost him much. Even his two concertos and three sonatas are really shortish pieces sewn together into larger classical forms, forms which, he realised early on, were not his strength. Unlike any other great composer, Chopin achieved his claim to immortality not by writing large scale works but in miniatures (the nocturne, prelude, étude, mazurka and so forth) though these frequently encompass emotion of tremendous power. Interestingly, this most romantic of Romantic composers disliked the association and this is borne out by the fact that, unlike his contemporaries Schumann and Liszt, his inspiration never came from literature or painting. Few of his compositions translate successfully to other instruments. ![]() Beethoven often tried to be orchestral in his piano writing, Schubert to be vocal, whereas Chopin was always completely and convincingly pianistic. He possessed an altogether richer and deeper poetic insight than the myriad pianist-composers who flourished during his lifetime.Ĭhopin was one of the first to write music for the piano in terms of the piano. ![]() The larger keyboard (seven octaves) and improved mechanism opened up new possibilities of musical expression. He dreamt up a whole range of new colours, harmonies and means of expression in which he exploited every facet of the new developments in piano construction. His influence on succeeding generations of writers of piano music was profound and inescapable. More than any other, Chopin is responsible for the development of modern piano technique and style. He wrote just under 200 works 169 of these are for solo piano. He’s the only great composer whose every work involves the piano – no symphonies, operas or choral works and only a handful of compositions that involve other instruments. Commentary by Jeremy Nicholas recommendations by Gramophoneįew composers command such universal love as Chopin even fewer have such a high proportion of their entire output remaining in the active repertoire. ![]()
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