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| The grave of Janusz Olejniczak, Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw
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(Mid photograph)
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| The grave of Janusz Olejniczak, Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw |
The musical nation of Poland is in deep shock this morning at the unexpected death of the great Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak. His death is a profound loss to Polish culture and a visionary interpretation of Chopin. A towering musician, idiomatic Chopinist and deep human being.
There is a sense of symbolic immanence and transcendence in his death that took place a mere three days after we had commemorated at the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, the 175th anniversary of Chopin's death in Paris at two in the morning on 17 October 1849.
I was unable to attend the funeral but came to Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw this morning, the day after the funeral (October 30th), to pay my respects to this great artist and creative human being - a human life of immense value to embrace in the fraught times we are living through. The profound music of Chopin, its melancholic nostalgia and sheer anger at times, has become increasingly relevant yet consoling during these distracted days.
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The grave of Janusz Olejniczak, Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw
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In 1970 Olejniczak won the 6th prize in the International Chopin Competition. At 18 he was the youngest prize-winner in the competition. Garrick Ohlsson won that year, Mitsuko Uchida 2nd, Piotr Paleczny 3rd, Eugen Indjic 4th and Natalia Gavrilova 5th. An impressive line up to compete against as a teenager!
An absolutely iconic Chopin interpreter with true humanity possessing all the character qualities and complex nuances of the not entirely predictable Polish artistic personality. His name was really only widely well-known among the Polish Chopin cognoscenti who deeply understood Chopin's expressive intentions - this accessible yet mysteriously inaccessible composer.
Not only the Chopin solo works for piano, he also performed his chamber music, especially the Cello sonata. Olejniczak's brilliant technique in other repertoire revealed his complete keyboard command and musical penetration in glittering Ravel, rhythmically robust Shostakovich and emotive Prokofiev concertos in recordings with Sinfonia Varsovia under Jerzy Maksymiuk. He brought unrivaled performance knowledge to his work in Chopin Competition juries. Jazz and new Polish compositions also preoccupied his essentially improvisatory temperament.
https://konkursy.nifc.pl/en/miedzynarodowy/juror/77/184_olejniczak_janusz
This rare, charming, warm-hearted man and gifted musician certainly inhabits the climat de Chopin and understands the potential of earlier instruments to give it dramatic and poetic voice. Certainly not all pianists trained on modern concert instruments have the sensitivity to transfer their digital dexterity and expression to the difficult single escapement mechanism of the Pleyel.
A wreath from the superb Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century under the late Frans Brüggen with whom Janusz expressively performed the sublime concertos of Chopin
A wreath from Polish National Radio who broadcast with intense love so many of his concerts, held interviews and designed complete programs around the piano music of Chopin. These recitals were often performed on Erard or Pleyel, instruments of his period.
A wreath from Elżbieta Penderecka, the wife of the great Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki
In Chopin the restraint of passion is far more powerful than the full expression of everything one has in mind. Chopin understood this principle to perfection. 'I only indicate. It is up to the listener to complete the picture.'
I had read books, correspondence and seen many films dealing with the highly creative romantic relationship between the great French writer and polemicist George Sand and the composer Fyrderyk Chopin at Nohant-Vic in the Berry region of central France. He wrote many of his immortal pieces there during the idyllic summer months. I felt I must make the effort to attend at least once, despite the rather complex journey from Warsaw. And Janusz Olejniczak was going to give a recital there !
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George Sand was a keen horticulturalist as is evident in her garden at the west side of the house
George Sand's Garden at Nohant Eugène Delacroix (1840s) one of the rare places where everything delights, calms, and consoles me
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Sand adored Nature, her beautiful maison and the entire Berry region, in particular the charming and picturesque nearby town of La Châtre. For many music lovers (even obsessives), the works of Chopin have rather eclipsed the extraordinary position George Sand occupied in the France of the day. She was an exceptionally prolific writer, polemicist and political activist - in addition possessed of an extraordinary insight into human romantic psychology with an incisive sense of humour and esprit. |
The bust of Chopin outside the entrance to the Bergerie Courtyard, Nohant
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Le maison de George Sand
Nohant |
As a tribute to this great musician I would like to repost my review of a poetic concert he gave at the 2019 Nohant Festival. It was so hard to choose a review from the numerous performances of his I have attended and written about in the capital Warsaw and the small spa town of Duszniki Zdrój.
Nohant Festival
Sunday 21st July 2019
14.30 Janusz Olejniczak
This afternoon Janusz generously played the following superbly accessible Chopin programme. Too many pianists forget the often limited musical experience of the majority of the audience and make excessive demands.
For me this was the finest recital of all the concerts I attended at this festival. Janusz Olejniczak at the top of his form! All of my observations above apply (he has learned to perfectly transfer his knowledge of the Pleyel or Erard to the Bechstein concert grand he played here). His range of refined sound and its quality were ravishing. I would like to add a few individual comments to pieces that particularly affected me.
Janusz engaged the audience in self-effacing, delightful and humourous banter in refined French during his recital which gave a warm and friendly intimacy and sense of improvised communication to the proceedings. 'What am I playing next?' was one question he asked us during the first half. 'I cannot remember!' with a finger to his temple and a despairing shake of the head. He speaks fluent French.
Programme
Fryderyk CHOPIN
Nocturne in C-sharp minor Op. posth.
Set the intimate, reflective, refined and nostalgic tone of the recital perfectly. Such a masterpiece and so moving with the luminous tone, perfect rubato and velvet touch of this pianist.
Nocturne in E minor Op. posth. 72 No 1
The melancholic cantilena was deeply moving in tone and sensitivity. Janusz had us in the palm of his hand as we were moved by the music rather than astonished - surely preferable in all of Chopin.
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Pleyel pianino No. 15025 purchased by George Sand through the intermediary Pauline Viardot on 25 May 1849
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Polonaise in A major ('Military') Op. 40 No 1 (1839)
I have always been particularity fond of the polonaise as I learned it at the age of 12 sailing with my family on an Italian ship of the Lloyd Triestino line from Australia to Genoa in Italy in the mid 1960s. Chopin seems to have taken this Polonaise with him from Majorca to Paris. In 1837, Heinrich Heine spoke of Chopin: ‘Poland gave him a chivalrous soul and the suffering of its history’. The A major Polonaise might be said to express that ‘chivalrous soul’, and the C minor Polonaise the historical suffering of the Polish nation.
5 Mazurkas
The carefully chosen mazurkas were simply divine....nothing left to say. His rubato is so marvellously idiomatic...
Scherzo No 2 in B-flat minor Op. 31 (1835-37)
A tremendously dramatic, brilliantly passionate, intense yet lyrical reading of irresistible forward momentum, rather like a Ballade.
Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski writes of this scherzo: 'The new style, all Chopin’s own, which might be called a specifically Chopinian dynamic romanticism, not only revealed itself, but established itself. It manifested itself à la Janus, with two faces: the deep-felt lyricism of the Nocturnes Op.27 and the concentrated drama of the Scherzo in B flat minor.'
Arthur Hedley thought about the work’s ecstatic lyricism, before concluding in a way even more appropriate today in the age of recording: ‘Excessive performance may have dimmed the brightness of this work, but should not blind us to its merits as thrilling and convincing music.’
Interval
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| The Dining Room at Nohant |
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| The place setting for Fryderyk Chopin |
Nocturne in C minor no. 1, Op. 48 No 1 (1841)
This Nocturne was composed at Nohant in the summer of 1841. Olejniczak adopted a tempo of what one might call mournful, majestic despair that permeates this piece. The great bass notes in the first section fell like statements of paradise lost, the central section a nostalgic and yearning chorale leading into the passionate utterance and agitation of the final section with an almost abnegation of life and final resignation to fate. His rubato is organically generated from within his heart, replete with refinement, instinctive taste and idiomatic understanding of le climat de Chopin.
3 waltzes
Just perfect Chopin, reminiscent of Dinu Lipatti yet possessing his own voice. In the A-flat major Op. 69 No 1, in some editions marked dolente, the deep, haunting nostalgia for the dance and his joyful youth in Warsaw seemed to fade into the dusk of memory, age and recollection. Absolutely magical rubato and an expression of universal yearning as time passes and time erases touch...'L'Adieu'...
Ballade No 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1831 or 1834/5)
To follow Bach with Chopin established a vital
'Baroque' connection between the two composers which is of major importance
when approaching the Baroque polyphony inherent in the Polish composer's
work (in turn influenced by his Silesian teacher Jozef Elsner). Olejniczak was powerfully self-centred and declamatory in this personal performance of Chopin's
writing. I remember Vladimir de Pachmann audibly congratulating himself
on a well-executed passage in Chopin 'Well done Pachmann!' he was heard to
exclaim.
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. In the structure there are parallels with sonata form but Chopin
basically invented an entirely new musical genre.
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. I have always conceived
this work to be an absolute musical narrative of a fraught love
affair but others may well see a political narrative given the
horrific times Poland was suffering under Russian hegemony - far more
likely!).
For everyone, the Ballad was an epic work, in which
what had been rejected in classical high poetry now came to the fore: a world
of extraordinary, inexplicable, mysterious, fantastical and irrational events
inspired by the 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 of this literary form:
‘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’. (quoted by Mieczysław
Tomaszewski)
I have received from Chopin a Ballade’,
Schumann informed
his friend Heinrich Dorn in the autumn of 1836.
‘It seems to me to be
the work closest to his genius (though not the most brilliant). I told him that
of everything he has created thus far it appeals to my heart the most. After a
lengthy silence, Chopin replied with emphasis: “I am glad, because I too like
it the best, it is my dearest work”.’
Mieczysław Tomaszewski paints the background to
this work penetratingly:
'It was during those two years that what was
original, individual and distinctive in Chopin spoke through his music with
great urgency and violence, expressing the composer’s inner world spontaneously
and without constraint – a world of real experiences and traumas, sentimental
memories and dreams, romantic notions and fancies. Life did not spare him such
experiences and traumas in those years, be it in the sphere of patriotic or of
intimate feelings. [...] For everyone, the ballad was an epic work, in which
what had been rejected in Classical high poetry now came to the fore: a world
of extraordinary, inexplicable, mysterious, fantastical and irrational events
inspired by the popular imagination. In Romantic poetry, the ballad became a
‘programmatic’ genre. It was here that the real met the surreal.'
And
there is no doubt that in creating the first of his piano ballades, Chopin
allowed himself to be inspired by just such a vision of this highly Romantic
genre. What he produced was an epic work telling of something that once
occurred, ‘animated by strangeness’, suffused with a ‘melancholy tone’, couched
in a serious style, expressed in a natural way, and so closer to an
instrumental song than to an elaborate aria.
For Olejniczak, a narrator opens this story with the
possibilities of many 'interpretations'. He has an extraordinary narrative
sense and musical gift. Such an unfolding would have had
immediate contemporary emotional relevance to Chopin's educated
contemporaries, brought up as they were with a strong balladic sense and
tradition through poetry. This was a truly rhapsodic account of
heroic defiance yer retaining honour and fierce dignity. Great drama emerged with his phrasing and
illuminating rubato. A majestic and noble conclusion.
2 waltzes
So few pianists have any idea how to play a Chopin waltz with period feel and more importantly early nineteenth century sensibility in 2019. Here we had divine understanding of the Chopin waltz...enough said.
Polonaise No. 6 in A flat major ('Heroic') Op. 53 (1842)
Composed at Nohant in the summer of 1842.
This was an imperious, majestic and dramatic account by Olejniczak, not unlike a Ballade in this interpretation. It contained in the words of Hugo Leichtentritt, a German musicologist and composer ‘everything that the polonaise contains in terms of sparkle, distinction, strength and enthusiasm was expressed in this masterpiece in the most exhilarating way possible’.
His approach also justified the view of the modern Polish musicologist, music critic and composer Jan Zdzisław Jachimecki who considered it ‘the most perfect work in the history of the genre’.
The Scale of Love (1717-1718) - Jean-Antoine Watteau (National Gallery, London)
Janusz then turned to us mentioning in soft and charming French how Nohant was the domain of love between Chopin and the great French writer George Sand. His appropriate encore would be Le Rossignol en Amour (The Nightingale in Love) from the Pièces de clavecin Book III by Francois Couperin. Thus did he open another window on an area of musical exploration I have often examined on the harpsichord with intense pleasure, this surprisingly close poetic and aristocratic relationship between the music of Francois Couperin and Fryderyk Chopin.
Wanda Landowska in her book Musique ancienne (1909, p. 213) writes of Chopin as being 'le Couperin du dix-neuvième siecle' or even in the 'Interpretation de Chopin' as the Polish composer being 'ce Couperin teinté de romantisme'.
This aspect of Chopin is also examined in detail in a fascinating essay by the great musicologist and Chopin scholar, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, entitled Chopin et Couperin : affinités sélectives [Buchet/Chastel Société Française de Musicologie 1997 p. 175-193]
Yves Henry wittily refers to Janusz Olejniczak as 'Le papa de Chopin'.....
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Chopin's Room (inhabited from 1839-1846). Actually only half of it with the soundproofed original entrance doors remain. After his departure Sand divided the room into two, the other half becoming a domestic library |
Here is a link to a brief YouTube memory of Janusz Olejniczak at Nohant with (if you read French) notification of his death, spiritual closeness to Nohant and an announcement of a celebration of his art that will take place at the 2025 Nohant Festival.
If you would like to further your understanding of the sound world inhabited by Chopin himself (if not vital the historical context) I suggest listening to two contrasting pieces (the Mazurka in B flat minor Op. 24 No. 4 and the so-called 'Revolutionary' Etude Op. 10, No. 12 in C minor) via this link below. They are performed on an 1831 Pleyel in this now rare recording by perhaps the most poetic and soulful of the Polish pianists - Janusz Olejniczak
I feel Janusz has retained the essentially Polish melancholic aristocracy of this composer. The Etude erupts from the instrument with a potent anger sweeping all before it while the mazurka is a miracle of intimacy, poetry and tone colour. None of these sound qualities are any longer possible on modern instruments, however great the player. Even brilliant musicians can only resort to inspired approximations and brilliant over-pedalled fudges. It is the very limitations of the period instrument that adds so much to the subtle feminine intimacy and sudden contrast of flaring of masculine anger so characteristic of the complex personality of this composer.
The often completely physical and percussive treatment of the instrument in Chopin interpretation today is beginning to depress me inordinately. Many young pianists possess such fabulous technique that has required enormous work and personal sacrifice to achieve, perhaps over twenty years. Why waste it thundering away? Is Chopin's music only to be offered up on the altar of egotistical virtuosic display, competition career building and monetary gain? 'Technique is money' a noted Asian musical academician and pianist once observed to me rather perceptively at a Masterclass.
There is no relation between Chopin's fastidious personality and the deformed augmentation of his masculine side at the expense of the feminine side of his nature, a man who abhorred 'the exhalation of the crowd'.
If you wish to purchase two superb earlier recordings expressing a refined yet powerfully expressive gender balance by Janusz Olejniczak, I can recommend these from the National Chopin Institute. They cover a range of Chopin genres on period Erard or Pleyel instruments from the Chopin Institute collection, recorded in 2007 and 2008 :
The opening piece, the Nocturne in C minor op.48 No.1 is profoundly appropriate in both melancholy and strength to hear just now
Divinely expressive Mazurkas and the most sensitive and poignant Nocturne in C-sharp minor - Lento con gran espressione - that could only come from a heart that has experienced much suffering in life. The B-flat minor Sonata is barely able to be listened to just now, it is so moving
also
The Larghetto is divinely romantic in expressiveness, colour, sensitivity of tone, touch and aristocratic sensibility.
This and the perfect style brillante of the Rondo as a slightly restrained recreation of life after love's unrequited yearnings creates in all a fabulous recording of the Chopin F-minor concerto with Frans Brüggen conducting the Orchestra of the 18th Century from the Chopin and his Europe Festival
The finest musically, expressively and deepest felt I have ever heard
From many other recordings he made during a rich lifetime - some 40 I believe - do look at:
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