Weronika Chodakowska (piano) - 'From Lviv to Paris' and 'From Paris to Lviv' - Piano Works of Karol Mikuli (1821-1897)
FROM PARIS TO LVIV
Recital of Piano Works by Karol Mikuli (1821-1897)
Weronika Chodakowska (piano)
Last night was cold and slightly foggy in Warsaw being a week before Christmas Eve. I wandered the expanding and rather exuberant, glittering central streets of the Polish capital, a seasonally festive Warsaw. There have been so many exponential, glamorous changes here since I first visited the city to work on a joint venture banking project in January 1992. Even at that time, Warsaw was regarded as 'like Paris' by many visiting Ukrainians.
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| Contemporary Warsaw at night |
I was en route to a recital and presentation of the second recording of piano works of a monument to Karol Mikuli (1821-1897), the Polish pianist, composer, editor, close friend and favourite pupil of Fryderyk Chopin.
The pieces (mostly world premiere recordings) were to be performed by the gifted young Polish pianist Weronika Chodakowska. I was a little early for the recital at the Kawai performance salon attached to the showroom close by Płac Trzech Krzyży (try pronouncing that perfectly as a foreigner wrestling with the language in wintry Poland!). I happily sought a welcoming coffee at the nearby, warm and literate Cafe Nero, complete with its library and many comfortable sofas.
As the minutes ticked past, I perused the review and context I had written of her first recording 'From Lviv to Paris' which appears below. It brought back so many fond memories. I anticipated with much pleasure another section to her remarkable and unique Mikuli resuscitation project. Rather than repeat myself, I suggest you read the historical preamble below before the account of this recital and my review of the recording.
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| Weronika Chodakowska and Agata Szabłowska |
The recital opened with a fascinating introduction to the composer and his music in a dialogue between Chodakowska and her knowledgeable manager Agata Szabłowska. A subtle sense of significant theatre entered the proceedings with her scarlet gown and a striking matching suitcase.
With my own love of literary analogy in Romantic music and its important contribution of cultural context to any examination of the music, I immediately associated this symbolic case with the unfamiliar, the nature of migration, travel, emotional journeys, memories, even grief and displacement. A brilliant gesture of dimensional extension to the music I thought.
A cursory examination of Mikuli's biography indicates a peripatetic nature. This wanderlust was entwined with a musical love of embracing original harmonic transitions from Romanian folk music in his compositions. His work with Chopin and his own remarkable creations were the beginning of the revelation, at that time, of the revolutionary, even politically subversive nature, of many of Chopin's compositions. Our familiarity with Chopin tends to obscure what must have been a new and exciting unfolding of a new musical landscape.
Born in Chernivtsi in present day Ukraine, Karol Mikuli (1819-1897) was a favorite pupil, composer and later editor of Chopin after his death. I had examined the music of Chopin's other highly talented pupils, all pianist- composers such as the Norwegian Thomas Tellefsen (1823-1874), the tragic genius and prodigy Carl Filtsch (1830-1845) of Transylvania, born in Mühlbach (Sebeș) in present-day Romania. He was not yet 15 when he died of peritonitis, silence descending over this sublime musical imagination. Finally Adolph Gutmann (1819-1882), pianist, composer and painter in oils on silk. This 'muscular' pianist was another Chopin favourite and copyist of many of Chopin's works and a devoted friend during his final sufferings.
To concentrate on Mikuli is important given his incalculable influence on Chopin teaching, interpretation, period style of playing and sound. The illuminating book by Jean-Jaques Eigeldinger Chopin Pianist and Teacher as seen by his Pupils (Cambridge 1986) gives one a true insight of his impact.
However on this night, we were to raise the temperature of the Warsaw winter and hear some of his own unaccountably neglected compositions for the piano. The first album I reviewed entitled 'From Lviv to Paris' featured mainly early compositions, but here we were to hear works of Mikuli's maturity.
The Recital
Prélude D-dur No. 4 from
In recital she gave us this brief and simple lyrical introduction from the stylistically varied collection of pieces. All ten pieces from the set are recorded on the album.
Deux Nocturnes, Op. 19
Dix pièces, Op. 24 (selection)
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This dialogue was between Weronika Chodakowska and Ewa Sławińska-Dahlig. She is the author of the text about Mikuli in the booklet of the album From Paris to Lviv. She is a doctor of humanities, musicologist and the Director of the Fryderyk Chopin Society in Warsaw and author of the book Adolf Gutmann - Fryderyk Chopin's favorite student. |
Encore - from her first album 'From Lviv to Paris' - Rêverie in B minor Op. 9 No. 6
The nostalgic yearning and water-colour dreams contained in this work is of great beauty, a kind of dumka with rural Moldavian-Romanian folk song gestures of recalled landscapes that calm the heart...
The Album
This latest album from Weronika Chodakowska features
the world premieres of 14 piano works by Karol Mikuli
Some of the pieces played in her recital have been reviewed above and are also present on the album so I have not written duplicates
Valse in A major, Op. 20* - con grazia
The opening work on the album is the most elegant, graceful and charming Waltz in A major Op.20 (1869) to be performed con grazia. It is such a wonderful confection of the nineteenth century prevailing taste and waltz enthusiasm infused by the style brilliante and cantabile. Chodakowska understands this sensibility completely.
The waltz reminded me that piano music can be such a pleasure of civilized invention, calculated to appeal to those sentimental moods of the heart that one passes through in life.The affecting melodic line and waltz rhythm make no deep philosophical demands. Yet voice is given to the wide range of emotions and taste we experience in nineteenth century music. Too often, the wealth of pejoratively and foolishly to my mind 'salon music', so warm and sensual, is rarely heard today in recital. Our modern sensibility is so unsubtle compared to that of the true poets of Romantic literature, music and art.
DIX PIÈCES POUR PIANO OP. 24**
Prelude in A minor*
Romance in E major*
Impromptu in F minor*
Prelude in D major*
Alla Rumana in G minor*
There is a charming folkloric innocence in the opening of this brief work inspired by Romanian musical idioms and dance. Memories abound of his home of Czernowitz in Galicia (Chernivtsi in present day Ukraine).
Mazurka in A major
The emotionally affecting melody of this moving work is so expressively presented by Chodakowska. Gradually she enriches it in dynamic and rhythmic agitation into a passionate rhapsodic utterance that characteristically fades to calm resignation in conclusion.
Alla Rumana in F-sharp minor
An uncomplicated Romanian, joyful, folkloric idiom suffuses this piece. However, nostalgia enters life in its dark key of F-sharp minor which gives the work on occasion a more serious meditative, introspective mien leading to a resigned close
Ètude in B major
This is an unapologetically virtuosic concert work but with but marked with deep dimensions of emotional exploration lying beneath the reflective cantabile that runs through it like a golden thread
Cantilene in E flat
major
The word 'cantilena' is Italian for 'lullaby', a cradle song with an intense lyrical atmosphere. Chodakowska delicately paints this tender picture for us
Impromptu in G minor
Another fine virtuosic concert work written in the prevailing fashion of the time for style brilliante and cantabile set in contrast.
DOUBLE NOCTURNES OP. 19*
A minor
F-sharp minor
SIX WALTZES OP. 18*
The charm and grace of this diverse set of waltzes is of a poignantly moving intimacy and great individuality. Chodakowska does justice to this popular yet sensitive genre with playing of great delicacy, refinement, colour, tone and timbre
I have fallen in love with the subtle invention of these brief, soulful and heartfelt suggestions of a touching emotional landscape containing tender harmonic adventurism
Waltz in B minor
Waltz in D major - con calore
Waltz in B major - expressivo
Waltz in B flat minor - agitato
The rhythmic and subtle harmonic dislocation of the opening reveals a questioning mind of great musicality which Chodakowska opened for us
Waltz in E flat major
Waltz in B minor
Such a poetic, dreamy conclusion to this velvet box of artistic jewels ...
* World premiere
With my great love of the sensitive sound and colour of Pleyel pianinos, I cannot help but feel the textural intimacy of these works would be beautifully enhanced by performance on such a refined period instrument of richly diverse qualities of register, colour and timbre.
This would be a complement not a replacement for the subtle and sensitive playing of Weronika Chodakowska on the glorious Shigeru-Kawai she uses on this recording.
Weronika Chodakowska personal website in English and Polish
https://weronikachodakowska.com/
FROM LVIV TO PARIS
Piano Works of Karol Mikuli (1821-1897)
Weronika Chodakowska (piano)
The psychological and creative complexities of living in the shadow of a renowned genius must be manifold. There are many examples of fine pianist-composers who studied or worked with an immortal musical creative genius and fully recognized with a sense of inadequacy the immense qualities of their work. They clearly felt a selfless respect towards their master, even a sacred devotion to the preservation of his work.
However, I am plagued by the question of the degree such acolytes experience a conscious or subconscious conflict or threat to their own creativity and musical self-esteem. Are they tempted into invidious comparisons during their own creative impulses, evolve competitive or derivative stylistic utterances or desperately attempt to escape an inescapable musical influence, even considering the undoubted quality of their own musical invention ?
This speculation arises strongly in the case of two composers, the Chopin amanuensis Julian Fontana and the Chopin pupil Karol Mikuli, both composing in thrall to this musical genius. Both dedicated much of their lives to the authentic and accurate dissemination of his work, one in Lviv in present day Ukraine, the other in Latin America and briefly Cuba at one time. Both detailed extensive descriptive writing of their experience of Chopin as a pianist and teacher.
Karol Mikuli (1821-1897) was a pianist, composer and pedagogue of Armenian descent born in Czernivtsi (Czernowitz) in Galicia (Chernivtsi in present day Ukraine).
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The Market Square of Chernivtsi in the late XIX Century |
He was a pupil of Chopin for some three years, a music copyist and regarded the Pole exclusively as the paragon of all composers. 'Only the pupils knew the full Chopin the pianist, the one whose sublimity and perfection is revealed best seated alone with the privileged one in the classroom.' He felt a vocation to safeguard this legacy. He fled Paris during the 1848 revolution and returned to his birthplace of Chernivtsi where he became a successful concert pianist. He finally settled in Lviv (ruled by Austria at the time) in 1858 where he rejuvenated the musical life of the town. His performances of Chopin by the predominantly Polish population was received with delight.
His teaching of le climat de Chopin extended to many eminent and still influential pianists such as the nonpareil of Chopin interpreters Raul Koczalski (1885-1948), Moriz Rosenthal (1862-1946) and Aleksander Michałowski (1851-1938) All these pianists were fertilized by his intimate connection with Chopin's personality, music and teaching. Mikuli was engaged on the immense work of preparing most of Chopin's compositions for publication and became the most authoritative source of Chopin's teaching after his death. The city of Lviv became one of the most significant Chopin centers in Europe. Mikuli even replaced with Polish the German language of instruction at the Galician Music Society which he founded in Lviv.
Mikuli composed some thirty piano pieces, chamber works, songs and later sacred music. He was fascinated by Romanian folklore. The reason I was attracted to this remarkable album is that Weronika Chodakowska has devoted it entirely to his small piano pieces. Usually there is just a brief scattering among other composers of the day. There is a deep emotional meaning listening to this music composed by the most influential of Chopin pupils, especially in Warsaw in Poland.
One might imagine that daily involvement with Chopin and his work at such a close and intimate level as pupil and editor would preclude individuality of voice in his musical compositions. However, the civilized, lyrical and occasionally agitated voice of German Romanticism is distantly reminiscent of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Schubert can be heard in the Prelude in C major Op.9 No.1, the Agitato in G minor Op.9 No.2 (both world premières) and in a poetically refined form in the Lied in G major Op.9 No.4.
Weronika Chodakowska is attracted irresistibly to obscure and forgotten Polish piano repertoire. She is a prize winner of many competitions and performs at music festivals and gives concerts to acclaim both in Poland and abroad. She earned her Master's Degree under the quite wonderful Professor Elzbieta Tarnawska at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
Chodakowska is sensitive in her explorations of this relatively undiscovered repertoire with romantic phrasing and a seductive tone of velvety texture. Many of these works are world premières, Polish premières or premières on a modern instrument.
The charm and melodiousness is quite captivating such as the lively Scherzino in F sharp minor Op. 9 No.5. The nostalgic yearning and water-colour dreams contained in the Reverie in B minor Op.9 No.6 is of great beauty, a kind of dumka with rural Moldavian-Romanian folk song gestures of recalled landscapes that calm the heart. Even in the Mikuli Mazurkas there is very little derived from Chopin to my ear except the genre itself. The music is more a distillation by Chodakowska of the jasmine-perfumed atmosphere of a cultivated contemporary salon.
The melodically moving Mazurka Op. 10 and four rhythmically dancing Mazurkas designated Op.2 , all world premières, are graceful in folkloric conception and calm any troubled spirit. Chodakowska plays then with great rhythmic sensitivity, nostalgic poetry and articulate rubato. If the works bear any allegiance to his teacher Chopin, this feature makes them all the more expressively eloquent to me as an affectionate reminiscence. Chodakowska does not play them in a declamatory manner but more as a delicate homage to his adored composer. The passing shadow of Chopin across the stage into the present day is most affecting.
I imagine the Ballade in B-flat major Op.21 not as a passionate outpouring of narrative suffering and reflection in the Chopin manner, but as the emotional journey of a less tormented heart, albeit a sensitive one of animated and poignant lyricism. The concluding bars played by Chodakowska almost ultra-pianissimo are nothing short of scattered divine dust as the composition fades into an ethereal ether.
Chodakowska has beautifully captured the affectionate and tender creative influence of a towering musician on this gifted composer, his master. This should not overlook the extraordinarily sensitive and moving emotional expressive achievements of his own refined piano compositions. They often possess the simplicity Chopin always referred to as his ideal in creation and playing. In many ways Mikuli has offered Fryderyk Chopin, a teacher and composer of genius, his own superb music written in the heartfelt spirit of a devoted and adoring apostle. Fascinating for us to hear this gift at last.....
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| Karol Mikuli (1821-1897) To purchase this album https://opus-series.com/index.php?lang=pl&p=sklep&f=&c=&t=album&st=data&o=&pid=145&page=0  |
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