Fryderyk Chopin and Dimitry Ablogin - Interview and Review in Warsaw of a renowned CD of the Late Works of Chopin Op.45-64 played on Chopin's last Pleyel of 1848 (Chopin Museum) - 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever'
A timely moment to read this again, think and listen concerning Chopin interpretation in 2025 …..
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Endymion (1818)
John Keats (1795-1821)
A Poetic Romance
(excerpt)
BOOK I
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
One may wonder why in Warsaw I open an important music review of a recording of the music of Chopin played on his last Pleyel piano with a quotation from the immortal English poet John Keats. In the domain of music, the poem arouses a singularly appropriate emotional feeling in my heart. This is one of the most significant recordings one can imagine in these benighted times of human barbarity.
I have always found Keats similar in tender yet passionate poetic temperament to Fryderyk Chopin. The last instrument used by the composer, resting now in the Chopin Museum in Warsaw, was recorded by the deep and uniquely sensitive 'angel of the piano', the pianist Dimitry Ablogin.
This 1848 Pleyel instrument is, without doubt or hindrance of mind, 'a thing of beauty'. Lodged now in the suspended paralysis of time, here it is once again raised to miraculous life. Ablogin is a joy in his carefully assembled discriminating programme of Chopin that reveals the subtle range of colour, grace, tone, timbre, and touch possible on this sensitive instrument.
The widely experienced restorer and builder of historical instruments, Paul McNulty, said in December 2021 that this instrument was the best preserved Pleyel he had ever seen. He was thrilled to be working on this historic instrument, one of the high points of his career, the 'most exciting thing I have ever done'. Much of the original instrument had been miraculously preserved and sensitively restored whilst in the possession of Chopin's family and during a later historical restoration. The old mechanism required little work, simply restringing, tuning and regulation.
Listening to this recording by Ablogin, one must remember the Pleyel is a conservative instrument in comparison to say the Erard, eminently suitable for the intimate, nuanced and subtle recitals that suited Chopin's introverted temperament. Chopin referred to the Pleyel as the ne plus ultra of pianos. With its single escapement mechanism, he needed to 'work' to produce the tone and perfect touch, the intimate, poetic sound he envisaged for many of his compositions. Ablogin also understands this aspect of Chopin's 'work' to bring its voice into glorious sound.
Another rare aspect concerning Ablogin is his essential modesty as a performer. He does not cultivate the piano as a means of flooding us with egotism and 'striking interpretative ideas'. He avoids using great classical piano compositions as a platform to project his own personality. Becoming a conduit for the nuanced, untrammeled conception of the composer, as he does, is one of the greatest arts of any instrumental performer.
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NIFCCD 149 https://sklep.nifc.pl/en/produkt/77317-late-works-opp-45-64 |
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| Dimitry Ablogin https://www.ablogin.de/ |
Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 45 (1841)
The fragile poetic delicacy of the instrument was clear from the opening of this masterpiece and will take you unresisting, close to the aesthetically ravishing sound world of Chopin. Ablogin communicates so well that the work was conceived in the spirit of improvisation. It was composed at Nohant during the summer of 1841 and published in the autumn as the separate Op. 45. Chopin was so pleased with this work he wrote uncharacteristically when he sent the manuscript to Fontana for copying : ‘well modulated!’.
The charming, cultivated sonority is revealed in the cadenza as it 'swells towards emotional ecstasy' (Tomaszewski). The conclusion fades into the oblivion of a delicate pianissimo trace of sound only possible on such a period instrument. The sublime work was dedicated to Princess Elisabeth Czernicheff, one of Chopin’s pupils.
Nocturne in E major, Op. 62 No. 2 (1845-46)
In this work one can always sense, beneath the calm exterior of the melody that winds into existence in a gentle lento sostenuto arabesque, the pressing need to erupt in agitation. This is the sudden expression of previously contained high emotional tension imprisoned in the central section. Such is often the case in Chopin nocturnes and such fluctuation of emotional colour and intensity is able to be perfectly expressed by Ablogin on this Pleyel.
And then towards the conclusion the return of the gentle melody. As James Huneker might have observed of it, the behaviour of Chopin is that of 'a genius but a gentleman'. Chopin the dreamer armed with a sword. I felt in this sensitive performance the suggested image of a painted veil.
Waltz in A flat major, Op. 64 No. 3 (1840-47)
This is a work for connoisseurs alert to the changing ambience of pianistic colours and their key associations. Ablogin presented us with an ambiguity of sensibility. As James Huneker put it, ‘It is for superior souls who dance with intellectual joy’. For Hedley, this Waltz ‘possesses a discreet, suave elegance’.
Mazurka in C sharp minor, Op. 50 No. 3 (1841-42)
Dancing was a passion in Europe, especially during carnival from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday. It was an opulent time, generating a great deal of commercial business, no less in Warsaw than in Vienna or Paris. Dancing - waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas - were a vital part of Warsaw social life, closely woven into the fabric of the city. There was veritable 'Mazurka Fever' in Europe and Russia at this time. The dancers were not restricted to noble families - the intelligentsia and bourgeoisie embraced the passion.
Chopin's experience of dance, as a refined gentleman of exquisite manners, would have been predominantly urban ballroom dancing with some experience of peasant hijinks during his summer holidays in Żelazowa Wola, Szarfania and elsewhere. Poland was mainly an agricultural society in the early nineteenth century. At this time Warsaw was an extraordinary melange of cultures. Magnificent magnate palaces shared muddy unpaved streets with dilapidated townhouses, szlachta farms, filthy hovels and teeming markets.
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| Chopin at a Pleyel piano. Pencil drawing by Jacob Götzenberger Paris October 1838, just after Chopin's first visit to England in 1837 |
By 1812 the Napoleonic campaigns had financially crippled the Duchy of Warsaw. Chopin spent his formative years during this turbulent political period and the family often escaped the capital to the refuge of the Mazovian countryside at Żelazowa Wola. Here the fields are alive with birdsong, butterflies and wildflowers. On summer nights the piano was placed in the garden and Chopin would improvise eloquent melodies that floated through the orchards and across the river to the listening villagers gathered beyond.
Of course he was a perfect mimic, actor, practical joker and enthusiastic dancer as a young man, tremendously high-spirited. He once wrote a verse describing how he spent a wild night, half of which was dancing and the other half playing pranks and dances on the piano for his friends. They had great fun! One of his friends took to the floor pretending to be a sheep! On one occasion he even sprained his ankle he was dancing so vigorously! He would play with gusto and 'start thundering out mazurkas, waltzes and polkas'.
When tired and wanting to dance, he would pass the piano over to 'a humbler replacement'. It is not at all surprising his teacher Józef Elzner and his doctors advised a period of 'rehab' at Duszniki Zdrój to preserve his health! Had it already begun to show the first signs of failing? This advice may not have been the best for him or his sister Emilia and Ludwika Skarbek as reinfection was always a strong possibility. Both were dead not long after their return from the so-called 'cure'.
Many of his mazurkas would have come to life on the dance floor as improvisations. Perhaps only later were they committed to the more permanent art form on paper under the influence and advice of the Polish folklorist and composer Oskar Kolberg. Chopin floated between popular and art music quite effortlessly.
This third Mazurka of the Op.50 set in C sharp minor is truly a masterpiece. At the turn of the 1840s, Chopin’s interest in polyphony and texture was aroused by a book published in Paris in 1837: a handbook on counterpoint by Cherubini. Chopin introduced polyphony into his mazurkas from then on. The dances of the oberek and kujawiak are both presented here, laid among the most remarkably adventurous harmonic transitions. Georg Sand wrote to Eugene Delacroix: ‘Chopin has composed two adorable mazurkas that are worth more than forty novels and express more than all the literature of the century’.
Ablogin on the Pleyel opens with a phrase whose colour and timbre come from the luminous azure above and seem to gently descend to earth. A memory evolves into reality. The emotional contrasts evoked in the sensibility by the varied textures and timbre, only possible on such a period instrument, are endlessly fascinating. The colour differences obtainable from the different registers of a the Pleyel put us in far closer touch with the descriptions of the unearthly, spiritual and transcendent sound worlds Chopin was reputed to produce at the keyboard.
Impromptu in G flat major, Op. 51 (1842)
The effect of this Impromptu and indeed Chopin's music as a whole, was accurately and suggestively described by Andre Gide in his Notes on Chopin:
‘What is most exquisite and most individual in Chopin’s art, wherein it differs most wonderfully from all others, I see in just that non-interruption of the phrase; the insensible, the imperceptible gliding from one melodic proposition to another, which leaves or gives to a number of his compositions the fluid appearance of streams.’
Ablogin created such a lyrical sound and imagery as this describes. One felt as if one was gazing into the sky at a gliding migratory Alpine swift on a summer day, effortlessly riding the invisible updrafts, sketching a blissful arabesque high above the Polish Mazovian plain.
Ballade in F minor, Op. 52 (1842)
For everyone in Chopin's day, the ballad was an epic literary work. That which had been rejected in severe Classical high poetry now came to the fore: a world of extraordinary, inexplicable, mysterious, fantastical and irrational events inspired by a more popular imagination. In Romantic poetry, the ballad became a ‘programmatic’ genre. It was here that the real met the surreal. Mickiewicz gave his own definition: ‘The ballad is a tale spun from the incidents of everyday (that is, real) life or from chivalrous stories, animated by the strangeness of the Romantic world, sung in a melancholy tone, in a serious style, simple and natural in its expressions’.
Penetrating the expressive core of the Chopin Ballades requires an understanding of the influence of a generalized view of the literary, musical and operatic balladic genres of the time. Not a simple task of time travel. In the musical structure there are parallels with sonata form but Chopin basically invented entirely new musical material. I have always felt it helpful to consider the Chopin Ballades as miniature operas being played out in absolute music, forever exercising one's musical imagination.
Chopin possesses an unrivalled position as Poland’s national composer and its musical wieszcz (poet, balladeer and prophet). This is particularly obvious in the musically narrative Ballades. His music is the beating heart of the nation. The great Polish poet Cyprian Norwid (1821–83) described Chopin as ‘a Varsovian by birth, a Pole by heart, and a citizen of the world by talent’.
Virtuoso brilliance, a supreme gift for melody and an air of sentimentality explain his immense appeal on a popular level. But more deeply the universality of Chopin lies in the sense of loss and nostalgia for his homeland. Contained within his intense music is patriotic resistance to domination, a feeling of sacrifice and melancholy in the face of ‘the bitter finales of life’ – all universal human emotions. ‘Chopin’s music was a kind of cultural battle-ground in the nineteenth century, prey to appropriation.’
I received with Ablogin the impression of a wanderer strolling through the countryside reflecting on the mystery of his entire life, examining and judging its intense joys and sorrows. And so this magnificent opera of life passed through the various phases of age, innocence and experience, painted in polyphonic sound with the rich painterly palette provided by the Pleyel. The pure, simple melodic innocence of the opening prepares the spirit in such a poignant manner for the polyphonic, emotional turbulence that follows carried aloft by his persuasive rubato. This rare experience was in augmentation to the deep philosophical penetration of the piece by Ablogin. It was as if one chapter after another of a profound spiritual travel journey had opened before us.
Mazurka in A flat major, Op. 50 No. 2 (1841-42)
A piece in which Ablogin captured the literacy and continuity of musical speech. The tone and rhythm of a kujawiak emerges with a melody that sways in a duple rhythm. It is a calm rather slow dance, to which Chopin gives an almost gently flirtatious character.
Ablogin often interpolated his own subtle, imaginative variations in perfectly period gestures of invention, no slave to the Urtext if such a permanently determined score exists in Chopin. There are almost preoccupied repeats of a simple mazurka motif in the central section before 'the return of the melody of the opening motif, after the bars of that rhythmic and textural monotony, to sound like deliverance.' (Tomaszewski)
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The Monument to Chopin in the Luxembourg Gardens, 1909 Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier) (1844-1910)
| Location: The State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg Russia |
Waltz in C sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2 (1840-47)
This waltz of rare intimacy and poetry was dedicated to a queen of the Paris salons, Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild, wife of the famous banker and art patron Nathaniel de Rothschild. The immense popularity of the work does nothing to diminish its poetry and lyrical tenderness. The memorable opening theme is imbued with a perfect harmoniousness, tenderness and melancholy. James Huneker deemed the first theme ‘a fascinating, lyrical sorrow’. Again Ablogin often interpolated his own subtle, imaginative variations in perfectly period gestures of invention
The waltz takes the form of a dance with a trio. Ablogin creates a rare cantabile of yearning sensibility in this trio which truly sings like a Bellini aria in the most affecting emotional manner. Many writers have endeavoured, mainly unsuccessfully, to convey in words the elusive aura of this waltz.
Berceuse in D flat major, Op. 57 (1844)
I felt that Ablogin began to drift, as the recording progressed, even further into the enchanted world that this instrument provided. The refinement and delicacy of his playing in the depiction of childish innocence in this lullaby is deeply poignant and affecting.
The work was composed in the summer of 1843 at Nohant for Louise, the baby daughter of Pauline Viardot. His interpretation contains a deeply moving tenderness, refinement and poetry that is most moving in its intense refinement of sound on this instrument. It is well known Chopin loved children and they loved him.
For me the work speaks of a haunted yearning for his own child, a lullaby performed in his sublimely imaginative mind, isolated and alone. No, not a common feeling about the work and possibly over-interpreted on my part, but what of that ....
Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 No. 1 (1841)
The fine Polish musicologist Tadeusz Andrzej Zieliński (1931-2012) felt that the melody of this Nocturne ‘sounds like a lofty, inspired song filled with the gravity of its message, genuine pathos and a tragic majesty’.
Marcel Antoni Szulc (1818-1898) worked as a teacher of classic languages and French in the St. Marie Magdalene high school and sporadically engaging himself as a sometime music critic. He conceived of this nocturne as ‘this magnificent hymn is proclaimed not by a feeble piano, but by a mighty organ – midst the sound of trombones and kettle drums’.
Ablogin achieves all these aesthetic descriptions.
Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major, Op. 61 (1846)
This is one of the truly great interpretations of this magnificent work, the finest and most profound Chopin on this recording. No other Chopin work combines so expressively those characteristic Polish heroic gestures with romantic introspective melancholy. The Fantasy inhabits the domain of dreams, a nocturne of delicate melancholy. Delicacy is in contrast with the reality of the Polonaise, that statement of the granite security of defiance. In this remarkable composition we travel the entire spectrum of feeling and emotion with Ablogin.
The music of Chopin uniquely touches and transports us into realms within the heart and spirit, an utterly inaccessible musical geography unapproached by any other composer.
The Polonaise-Fantaisie contains all the troubled emotion and desire for strength in the face of the multiple adversities that beset the composer at this late stage in his life. This work, the first in the so-called ‘late style’ of the composer, was written during a period of great suffering and unhappiness. He laboured over its composition. What emerged is one of his most complex of his works both pianistically and emotionally.
Chopin produced many sketches for the Polonaise-Fantaisie and wrestled with the title. He wrote: ‘I’d like to finish something that I don’t yet know what to call’. This uncertainty surely indicates he was embarking on a journey of compositional exploration along untrodden paths. Even Bartok one hundred years later was shocked at its revolutionary nature. The work is an extraordinary mélange of genres and styles in a type of inspired improvisation that yet maintains a magical absolute musical coherence and logic. He completed it in August 1846.
Feliks Jabłczyński, author of an essay on Chopin’s polonaises wrote: ‘Neither the 'Eroica' nor the 'Appassionata' of Beethoven has a single section of such raging passion – not so much a strength of mechanical striking and bravura, since those can be found in both Liszt and Berlioz, but a strength of inner passion – all the stronger in that with Chopin it is simple, natural, the concentration of all man’s faculties: senses, thought, willpower, physical strength and strength of feeling. At times, this fervour is almost pious… battles have been won with such fervour…’
Chopin leads us through a succession of extraordinary scenes and events. They pass in successive train through the imagination of any listener who can selflessly give himself in a meditative trance to this hypnotic music, a composition flickering on the screen of the mind. One has an imaginative experience bordering on the cinematic.
Ablogin assists this heightened life experience on the Pleyel with ultimate pianissimos, deeply touching rubato phrasing and powerful, yet not gargantuan, unbalanced fortes. He extracts such colours, tone, timbre, refined touch and variety within the dynamic spectrum that is simply not attainable or appears exaggerated on a modern concert grand.
The opening tempo is marked maestoso (a rare indication as with his two concerti) which indicates ‘with dignity and pride’. I was impressed with the ambiguity of Ablogin's opening of almost dreamlike, searching, poetic fantasy. There were phrases of deeply considered expressive emotion contrasted with the passionate expression which immediately set the atmosphere of mercurial, emotional fluctuation.
I felt the expressiveness of this extraordinary piece was constantly being searched for by Ablogin, perhaps at times even prayed for, then discovered as a type of improvisation. As the piece progresses, we move on once more, yet again, into dream far from any security of reality that may have been previously achieved. The invention fluctuates as if it is an irregular circulation of the blood, a profoundly expressive arrhythmia of the heart.
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Lord Byron's Dream (1827)
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA (1793 – 1865) Tate Gallery London |
The work reminds me incontrovertibly of lines from Byron's poem of 1816
The Dream
A change came o’er the spirit of my dream
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compass’d round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix’d
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
(excerpt)
Ablogin presents us with a superbly painted musical panorama laid out on a canvas of memories and associations. Episode after episode, nocturnal dreams alternate with the granite reality of the polonaise.
The Polonaise-Fantasy was published in 1846 in Paris, London and Leipzig. The reception was one of confusion and even upset. As Jachimecki stated: ‘the piano speaks here in a language not previously known’. Frederick Niecks’s judgment was that the Polonaise-Fantasy ‘stands, on account of its pathological contents, outside the sphere of art’.
Such comments did much to dissuade the work from being seriously engaged by musicians for many years. However, the revolutionary and expressively adventurous nature of the work slowly grew clearer in legendary significance as the morning mist lifted. The poetic depth of this masterpiece of Western music was finally recognized and expressed by renowned pianists such as Neuhaus, Horowitz, Rubinstein and Małcużyński.
The extra-musical message that moves us so deeply was succinctly expressed by Arthur Hedley who wrote of the ‘spirit that breathes’ in Chopin’s polonaises: ‘pride in the past, lamentation for the present, hope for the future’.
I feel Ablogin is supremely moved by this work and understands it with extraordinary musical penetration. He touches many polyphonic and normally concealed expressive structures and was poignant yet robust as is required in this remarkable music. There is much rich counterpoint and polyphony to be explored here (of which Chopin was one of the greatest masters since Bach).
This work also conveys a strong sense of żal, a Polish word in this context meaning melancholic regret leading to a mixture of passionate resistance, resentment and anger in the face of an unavoidable fate. Yet, Ablogin does not exaggerate the dynamic of the closing chord, so characteristic of ‘late Chopin’, the dissolution of doubt through the triumph of will. This would be too easy a declamatory answer to the exhausting physical and spiritual travail he has spent navigating his passage over the high and rocky mountain pass.
Yes, a complex work written when Chopin was moving towards the cold embrace of death.
Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9 No. 2 (1832)
For me this performance expressed a perfect understanding of what a musicologist might term 'the Chopin aesthetic’. Chopin’s best pupil Princess Marcelina Czartoryska advised the performer to intuitively immerse himself ‘au climat de Chopin’. The 'bible' of this information is surely the book Chopin Pianist and Teacher as seen by his Pupils by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger (Cambridge 1986).
Ablogin achieves this with a similar refinement, sensitive rubato and aristocratic phrasing to such written accounts of the composer’s playing. The interpretation gives us a perfect period atmosphere with the many individual expressive variations, ornamental fiorituras and interpolations Ablogin introduces ad libitum - a procedure often described in the contemporary literature and almost irresistible as a musician.
In modern interpretations and pianism there seems to be a movement to eclipse or at least diminish the 'feminine' aspect of the soul from Chopin. This is absurd and impoverishing and comes from our current preoccupation with the physical and crudely 'powerful' in life, the clichéd view of 'masculinity', the 'macho' male. Chopin was one of those rare individuals who managed to balance his masculine and feminine natures - a quality ever present in his music and something Ablogin seems to be profoundly aware of.
Chopin had enjoyed a very close relationship with the Pleyel firm, the instruments of which possessed a specially beautiful and intimate tone colour, which clearly appealed to the composer: … The expression of my inner thoughts, of my feelings, is more direct, more personal [than on an Erard, which produces its bright limpid tone colour effortlessly]. My fingers feel in more immediate contact with the hammers, which then translate exactly and faithfully the feeling I want to produce, the effect I want to obtain.” (Company of Pianos Richard Burnett 2004 concerning instruments in the Finchcocks Collection, p. 139). After listening to this recording one cannot help but wholeheartedly agree with this statement.
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Henry Raeburn (1756-1823). Painted in 1823, the year of his death. (Fyvie Castle) |
At Calder House, near Edinburgh, Jane Stirling made her Pleyel Grand available to Chopin in her drawing room, while Broadwood provided a piano for the composer’s own rooms. He liked the English instrument a great deal even in his fragile condition of dwindling strength. Chopin’s last public concert performance took place in Edinburgh on 4 October 1848, at the end of a concert tour through England and Scotland. Shortly after that Chopin returned to Paris and died a year later.
If you wish to read in detail the only description of the restoration by Paul McNulty of this instrument the link is here:
http://www.michael-moran.com/2021/12/the-renovation-of-chopins-last-piano.html
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NIFCCD 149 https://sklep.nifc.pl/en/produkt/77317-late-works-opp-45-64 |
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| Dimitry Ablogin https://www.ablogin.de/ Here is a transcription of an interview given by Dimitry Ablogin to Jan Brachmann of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. How to Play Chopin The pianist Dmitry Ablogin on old pianos, old recordings, and the singing of Ella Fitzgerald. Before your Chopin CD, you recorded Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. How do Beethoven and Chopin relate to each other? Chopin played and admired Beethoven. I’m not sure whether he knew the Diabelli Variations; if he had, they probably would have seemed foreign to him. Although Chopin regarded Beethoven as a genius, he felt that Beethoven sometimes violated fundamental laws of music. For Chopin — an absolute perfectionist in every musical aspect, whether vertical and horizontal balance, form, harmony, or counterpoint — that was difficult to accept. His musical taste was, overall, conservative. Perhaps only Mozart and Bach fully met his aesthetic ideals. Chopin loved Beethoven’s A-flat major Sonata, Op. 26, with the funeral march, and occasionally played it. How did his contemporaries react to his playing? He was sometimes criticized for being too vague or “feminine”. He replied elegantly: “I suggest — the listener must complete the picture”. I think this indirectness must have been one of the most important qualities of his playing. But back to Beethoven! To his favorite pupil, the highly gifted Carl Filtsch — who was to die at just thirteen — Chopin gave a piano reduction of Beethoven’s Fidelio as a token of special affection. Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler considered Chopin one of the greatest composers of all time, placing him alongside Beethoven and Wagner. I completely agree with that judgment, although I wouldn’t put Wagner on the same level — more for personal than for musical reasons. But it’s remarkable that a conductor like Furtwängler valued Chopin’s music so highly. Many of Chopin’s contemporaries wouldn’t have agreed, since the prevailing view was that a true composer must have an opera or a symphony in their portfolio. Chopin was constantly urged by friends and colleagues to finally write “something proper”. But he continued composing for the piano and remained true to himself — I deeply admire that and think it’s a sign of his greatness. When I came from Russia to Germany and began studying historical instruments in Frankfurt with Jesper Christensen, the first work we went through together was Chopin’s Preludes, Op. 28. I still remember Jesper interrupting me, lost in thought, and saying: “Could it be that Chopin is perhaps the greatest composer who ever lived?” I believe the more deeply one engages with Chopin, the more one’s admiration for his music and personality grows. Do you have models for Chopin interpretation? Sviatoslav Richter once said that the Chopin Mazurkas he heard in his youth in Odessa, played by Ignaz Friedman, were the most beautiful of his life. Oh yes! Friedman is one of my idols too. His recording of the E-flat major Nocturne, Op. 55 No. 2, is probably the best thing that ever happened to Chopin’s music — and, of course, his Mazurkas. My guiding stars are also Chopin’s “grand-pupils”. Two of them left many wonderful recordings: Raoul Koczalski and Moriz Rosenthal. Rosenthal also studied with Liszt, uniting in his playing two great 19th-century piano schools. Then there’s Raoul Pugno, who studied with Antoine Marmontel and thus stood in direct Chopin tradition. There aren’t many recordings of him, but one can learn a lot just from his Nocturne in F- sharp major, Op. 15 No. 2. And also Sergei Rachmaninov — for me, not only one of the greatest composers but one of the greatest pianists who ever lived. He left several wonderful Chopin recordings, especially of smaller pieces like waltzes, mazurkas, and nocturnes. Two things stand out in your recording: first, your hands often don’t play exactly together — tones written simultaneously are struck slightly apart. That was common in the 19th and early 20th centuries but considered improper after World War II. And second, you have such a natural, meaningful rhythmic freedom — a rubato like Ella Fitzgerald or Juliette Gréco sing. Yes, I learned from both of them! Also from Nina Simone and Bill Evans. And from Chick Corea, who made a wonderful recording of two Mozart piano concertos conducted by Bobby McFerrin. I think I’ve always been drawn to that freedom and flexibility, but I once lacked the vocabulary and tools to embody it. Studying historical pianos here in Frankfurt was crucial. The instruments themselves teach you so much about articulation, balance, sound, and musical time. We also studied written sources, and listening to old recordings was an integral part of our education. How do you work with those old recordings? We analyzed in detail what those performers did to achieve certain expressions. Sometimes we tried to imitate individual phrases or motives directly from the recordings. Comparing the recordings of Chopin’s “grand-pupils”, Liszt’s pupils, or those of Clara Schumann or Theodor Leschetizky with pianists from the second half of the 20th century, one notices that modern pianists still have tempo flexibility — but in two limited ways: for them, flexibility means only slowing down; they never catch up afterward. And second: their hands are almost always together, not independent. For the Romantics, catching up the time after a slowdown was very important. Chopin told his students: if a piece lasts five minutes, within those five minutes all tempo flexibility is possible — but in the end it must still last five minutes, not shorter or longer. And for him, the left hand was the conductor that kept the pulse, while the right hand was the soprano who could take liberties. This separation of hands, like other aspects of Romantic piano playing, had both practical and aesthetic reasons. Aesthetic — because it’s simply beautiful and poetic! It allows one to highlight certain tones and play with subtler expression than in strict simultaneity. It makes the music more alive. Exactly! Perfect synchronization can sound like a period at the end of a sentence. If you separate the hands slightly or arpeggiate a chord instead of playing it perfectly together, it creates a forward impulse. Practically speaking, this also relates to the construction of historical pianos: until the mid-19th century, instruments were straight-strung rather than cross-strung as they are today. This had a profound impact on the registers, each possessing its own dynamic range and character. The higher notes grew progressively more delicate as the strings became shorter. Thus, when a deep bass tone and a high melodic note are struck together, the treble sound has less chance to project — making a slight displacement between the hands entirely natural. That was also common on the harpsichord. Yes, and Chopin comes from that tradition. As a child he played a lot of Bach and Mozart. During his studies in Warsaw, he also worked with the clavichord. A Polish colleague found that at the time of Chopin’s studies, there were no grand pianos at the conservatory — he did all his theory work, harmony, and counterpoint on the clavichord. Possibly — I’m speculating — that quiet but sensitive instrument influenced his aesthetic of piano playing. In Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s Chopin: As Seen by His Pupils, it says that many thought Chopin’s delicate playing was due to poor health — that he never played louder than mezzo-forte. Some students contradicted that: it wasn’t physical weakness, but his understanding of piano sound. So it was a conscious choice! Exactly. Moreover, the mechanics of his instruments were so light that he could easily have played louder. To conclude the topic, I must emphasize that my goal is not to pursue some abstract ideal of historical correctness — rather, I find this way of playing, this manner of speech, natural, organic, genuine, and truly “mine”. The paradox is that one must learn so much to become natural. Chopin put it beautifully: “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes — and more notes — it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art”. You also ornament the reprise of the E-flat major Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2. Where do you find stylistic guidance for such ornamentation, which is quite different from Mozart’s In this case, I can rely on Chopin himself. My recording is based on the tradition passed down by his student Karol Mikuli. Chopin always encouraged his students to add their own ornaments and sometimes wrote them into their scores. There’s a recording of that nocturne by Raoul Koczalski, from which I adopted the ornaments almost exactly; a few I dared to add myself. As for stylistic understanding, the greatest teachers are the composers themselves. Chopin’s art of ornamentation is hidden everywhere in his own works: when themes reappear, he almost never repeats them identically — he always adds embellishments. On your recording you play a very special instrument — the piano Chopin owned in his final years, now in the Warsaw museum. Did you learn something new about Chopin through it? A very clear yes! Before the recording I was allowed to practice on this instrument for several hours. That intimate contact brings entirely new discoveries, some of which I’ll carry with me for life, even if not all made it into the recording. This Pleyel was Chopin’s last instrument — witness to his death in his apartment on the Place Vendôme in Paris on October 17, 1849. His Scottish pupil Jane Stirling bought it after his death and immediately sent it to Warsaw to Chopin’s sister Ludwika. Until World War II, the instrument remained with her descendants and stayed perfectly preserved. Shortly before the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the Nazis took it to a castle near Salzburg; after the war it was returned to Warsaw. Only in 2021 was it comprehensively yet expertly restored by the great specialist Paul McNulty in the Czech Republic. It’s one of the finest and most beautiful fortepianos I’ve ever touched. The fact that it belonged to Chopin himself adds an entirely new dimension. So what did you learn from it? The sound of Pleyel matched Chopin’s aesthetic. This instrument doesn’t understand violence. One must speak through it with the fingers, never impose oneself or apply physical pressure from the shoulders or forearms. It demands pure finger technique. One must also relearn the balance of registers: the treble is very delicate, and where one expects brilliance in virtuosic passages, one must find a different character. A piano with such a strong, distinctive personality is not merely an “instrument”, but a partner with whom one makes music together. Because the registers are so clearly separated in a straight-strung piano, it seems to invite a more flowing tempo. You play the middle section of the E major Nocturne, Op. 62 No. 2, quite briskly — and it works. On a modern piano, the canonic interweaving of voices would blur more easily. Exactly! Even Chopin’s “grand-pupils”, whose recordings we have, played on modern instruments but generally chose faster tempos than most performers today. A fascinatin phenomenon: life today moves faster, but thinking has become slower. With old instruments, it’s not just the clarity of registers that allows quicker tempos — it’s also the straight stringing and the short strings, which almost require it. On a modern Steinway, a string vibrates much longer than on an 1848 Pleyel, so on the older instrument you’re almost compelled to play more fluidly to ensure melodic continuity. Again, practical and aesthetic conditions go hand in hand. At the CD presentation in Warsaw, you said you would have liked to call the album Philosopher Chopin. What does this philosopher contemplate? When I look at the Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op. 61, it seems like the beginning of a new style. It’s such a pity Chopin didn’t live long after it. He experiments with impressionistic sounds, form, polyphony, and harmony. Chopin was always a powerful, rigorous thinker in his music, however emotional it may seem. But with the Polonaise-Fantaisie, one gets the impression that Chopin has turned the very process of thinking into music. Perhaps that’s why he struggled to find a form or a title for it. The piece seems to listen to itself being composed. Yes, exactly. And although I’ve known it since I was six or seven and have played it for almost twenty years, it remains a mystery to me. Many of Chopin’s “last works” are unusually bright — the two Nocturnes in B major and E major, Op. 62, and also the Polonaise-Fantaisie. Where does this light in his late style come from, given that his health was failing? I’ve thought about that a lot. The Barcarolle and Berceuse from this final period are also radiant pieces. One gets the sense that Chopin experienced some kind of inner illumination — perhaps he learned to view his physical decline with inner detachment. Or perhaps it’s a natural biographical development. We find this journey toward serenity and cheerfulness in many composers — most strongly, perhaps, in late Beethoven. In this context, I recall a wonderful line from Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game: “Such cheerfulness is neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art”. Interview by Jan Brachmann. |
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