Fryderyk Chopin
(1810-1849)
Complete Piano Music
Vol. 5
Nocturnes Vol. 1
The son of a French émigré of relatively humble origin, who had
established himself as a schoolmaster in Warsaw and espoused the cause of
Poland with enthusiasm, Fryderyk Chopin was to make his home and career in
Paris, after early success at home, where he was trained at the Conservatory
and gave a series of public concerts before trying his luck in Vienna. Paris,
however, proved more suitable for his particular talents. As a pianist he
excelled in a peculiar delicacy of nuance, while as a teacher and as a
gentleman he proved acceptable in the elegant salons of the French capital.
For some ten years Chopin enjoyed or occasionally suffered a
relationship with the strong-willed blue-stocking Aurore Dudevant, better known
by her pen-name of George Sand, a woman of a distinctly liberated cast of mind,
who was to find even in her inamorato a source for her own fiction. Chopin was
to die of tuberculosis, from which he had long suffered, at the early age of
39.
Among forms that Chopin made his own was the Nocturne, at one
time synonymous with the Serenade, but with the Irish pianist John Field and Chopin, his
successor, a lyrical piano piece offering, nominally at least, a poetic vision
of the night. Field wrote eighteen piano pieces with this title between the
years 1814 and 1835 and these introduced a new form of piano music that was
developed not only in the Nocturne but in other separate movements for
piano throughout the century.
The three nocturnes
that make up Opus 9 were written either during Chopin's final period in Warsaw
or during his first months abroad. They were published in Paris in 1833, with a
dedication to Thomas De Quincey's "celestial pianofortist" Marie
Moke, once engaged to
Berlioz, but from 1831 until their separation four years later, the wife of the
piano-manufacturer Camille Pleyel, in whose Salle Pleyel Chopin gave his first
public concert in Paris. The B flat minor Nocturne, Opus 9, No. 1, with
its more embellished melodic line and passionate central section is followed by
the familiar E flat Nocturne and a third of rather more energetic
character in B major.
The three Nocturnes
of Opus 15 were published by Maurice Schlesinger in 1834 with a dedication
to Ferdinand Hiller, who had impressed Chopin as a boy with great talent.
Hiller was a pupil of Hummel and a close friend of Mendelssohn. The first of the set, in
F major, has a passionate F minor central section, followed by an F sharp major
Nocturne of greater complexity and a gentler G minor Nocturne, marked
Lento, languido e rubato.
Schlesinger, a somewhat unprincipled publisher, satirised by Flaubert,
who was in love with Schlesinger's wife, published the Opus 27 Nocturnes in
1836, with a dedication to Countess Apponyi, wife of the Austrian ambassador in
Paris, who brought Johann Strauss to Paris in the same year. Chopin had
deplored the tastes of Vienna and the dominance of Strauss and Lanner, both
enjoying, to his expressed surprise, the title of Kapellmeister. The C sharp
minor Nocturne, Opus 27, No. 1, has at its heart a more dramatic A flat
major section, while the Nocturne in D flat major, the second of
the set, marked Lento sostenuto, includes more elaborate chromatic
embellishment.
The eleventh of Chopin's Nocturnes, in the key of B major, opens
the set of two published in Berlin in 1837 and forming Opus 32. The nocturnes
were dedicated this time to Baronne de Billing, a pupil of the composer. The
first of the pair lacks elaborate ornamentation, with a conclusion of dramatic
contrast. The second, in A flat major, has a brief chordal introduction before moving into a more familiar texture. Its
central section includes an excursion into the key of F sharp minor. The C
minor Nocturne of 1837 was only published 100 years later.
The second attempt at the form, the Nocturne in C sharp minor,
was written in 1830, Chopin's last year in Warsaw, which he left, never to
return, on 2nd November. The direction Lento con gran espressione indicates
the character of the work, which was first published posthumously in Poznan in
1875.
Interpreting Chopin by
Idil Biret
Although the romantic
era in its music and its performances is not so far from our own time, for
various reasons we seem to have distanced ourselves from it. As a consequence,
often composers very different from one another like Chopin, Liszt, Schumann
and Wagner are brought under the same title of Romantic Composers. In this
context it is quite normal to find Chopin and Liszt mentioned together as
composers of similar style, while there are no two sound worlds as different
from one another as those of Chopin and Liszt. The conception of the piano
sound that Chopin created is based on the model of the voice. Liszt, on the
other hand, fascinated by the development of the modern piano during his
period, challenges the orchestra in an attempt to reproduce on the piano the
richness of the orchestral palette.
It must be among the
fondest wishes of any pianist to be able to have heard Chopin perform his own
music. Fortunately there are some recordings providing indirectly some evidence
of this way of approaching the piano. One may in particular mention the
recordings of Raoul von Koczalski who studied with Chopin's pupil Karol Mikuli.
It is also enlightening to listen to the recordings of Cortot, a pupil of
Decombes who received precious counsel from Chopin. Further, Friedman, de
Pachmann and Paderewski who were not direct descendants of Chopin were still
close enough to his aesthetic conceptions to be able to convey the spontaneity
Chopin is said to have brought to his playing as well as the polyphonic and
rhythmic richness which are so apparent in Chopin's conception of the piano. In
spite of the inferior quality of the recordings from the earlier part of this
century, a considerable number of common points are audible in the performances
of these pianists. Notably, a very fine legato, a piano sound that never loses
its roundness since intensity replaces force, the exact feeling of rubato,
recognition of the importance of inner voices and consequently a remarkable
sense of polyphony. Contrary to the popular image of the romantic virtuoso,
simplicity and naturalness remain exemplary in the way these great Chopin
interpreters approach music.
It is interesting to
note also the evidence left by musicians, contemporaries of Chopin, and
Chopin's pupils about his interpretations. A perfect legato drawing its
inspiration from bel canto and unimaginable richness in tone-colour were the
product of subtle variations in a sound full of charm and a purity that lost
none of its fullness even in its forte passages. Chopin could not sound
aggressive, especially on the pianos of that period. Berlioz wrote, "To be
able to appreciate Chopin fully, I think one must hear him from close by, in the
salon rather than in a theatre."
Chopin's sense of
rubato was unrivalled. The temps dérobé (stolen time) assumed under the
hands of the great master its true meaning. Mikuli gives a description of the
rubato as Chopin conceived it, which seems to be of penetrating clarity. After
recalling that Chopin was inflexible in keeping the tempo and that the
metronome was always on his piano, Mikuli explains, "Even in his rubato,
where one hand – the accompanying one – continues to play strictly in time, the
other – the hand which sings the melody – freed from all metric restraint
conveys the true musical expression, impatience, like someone whose speech
becomes fiery with enthusiasm."
Together with a
certain classicism, moderation was the basis of the world of Chopin. Hence,
playing his music on the powerful modern pianos and in large concert halls is
often problematic. One should ideally never go beyond a self-imposed limit of
sound and keep in mind as the criteria the possibilities of the human voice. It
is therefore better to somewhat reduce sonority without sacrificing the quality
of the sound.
In performing Chopin's
works one should neither try to reconstruct nor imitate the interpretations of
the past which remain unique, but try, with the help of all the recorded and
written material we are lucky to possess, to penetrate deeper into the musical
texts and advance further in the unending quest for a better understanding of
the art of Chopin.