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I recently aquired a (nearly) complete set of all Chopin compositions. One of the books was the Ballades and Sonatas. Even though I know I will not be able to play any of these any time soon, I felt compelled to buy the set, as it were.

At least now I have all the music I'll ever need for a lifetime...

Oh, and happy birthday for yesterday

The slow movement of the third sonata is not terribly hard, and has an especially gorgeous middle section. The slow movement of the first sonata wouldn't be hard except for all the 5s against 4s and that sort of thing; its being in 5 to begin with doesn't make it particularly harder but does make it a bit odder. I find the minuet (only known Chopin minuet) tricky because I have trouble with the wide jumps, but it may not be tough for you. The Funeral March has big thick chords but is easier than most of the sonata movements.

Elene

I looked on YouTube in hopes of finding that Liberace clip with the first use of the candelabra, and it wasn't available. However, I did find the Smothers Brothers episode that included that business with 64/1 and the traffic cop. Look about halfway through:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2BdoPTGc64

Elene

Hi everyone! I was introduced to music theory starting in January, I'm 16 years old. Initially I was teaching myself, but then I decided to take school piano classes to avoid the cost of private lessons. My teacher is a USC doctorate in music who usually charges $150/hour for lessons, which is a plus since its a free high school class.

I have been playing for about 8 months now, and I'm starting Hanon exercises right now. Up until now, I really have been learning only about music theory (how to build scales, blues scales, beat, etc.)

ANYWAYS! The more I listened to classical piano music as I did my homework, the more I fell in love with the works of Chopin.

Are there any easy/intermediate Chopin pieces that I might be able to play? And where can I get these sheets online if possible? I'm a bit iffy on buying an entire Chopin book when I'm not sure if I can play any of it!

Welcome fellow Chopin lover!

Chopin wrote a number of pieces for the grades 4-6 range that you could probably attempt. These include some preludes (op. 28 no.4, 6, 7, 20 etc), a few mazurkas (not sure of which ones, there are a lot) and some nice waltzes, like the posthumous one in A minor. However, I'm not entirely sure of your ability level; they may be too easy or too difficult for you.

You could just type these pieces in google and I'm sure you would get millions of results to download the music one by one, or you could invest some money in a book that includes many of the easier works by Chopin. I'm not sure of the price or the name of the book but I'm sure someone here can tell you. It will be a valuable investment.

If you can't talk the vintners into a Chopin champagne, would you accept a Chopin chardonnay? Only in moderation, of course, and no driving afterward. I'm thinking Napa Valley--- not Modesto.

For ihave12fingers and anyone that doesn't know about it: IMSLP is an online library of both obscure and well-known pieces of music. You can't find recent, copyrighted stuff there, and some editions are poor quality, but if you are looking to check pieces out to see if they are suitable for you, it's extremely useful and totally free (though they will gladly accept donations).

Virtual Sheet Music is a site that gives you access to a lot of scores for a yearly fee. It is limited in some ways, but also useful. There are others as well.

Alfred has a couple of books of easier (note I didn't say "easy") Chopin pieces that you definitely should check out when you're ready.

You're fortunate to have piano classes in high school! However, I am having palpitations over the idea of a teacher charging $150 per hour. About $40-45 is typical here in Albuquerque at the moment, and I charged considerably less than that. (I am paying $45 per hour to a teacher that I can tell you for sure is incredibly skilled-- it's hard for me to imagine anyone better, and I know what's around.) Where do you live, I wonder?

Best wishes, and have fun!

Elene

Isn't it interesting that California is now perceived to have multiple wine countries? When I was growing up in suburban Los Angeles, Wine Country was synonymous with Napa and Sonoma Counties (though there were certainly other vineyards elsewhere in the state).

Nowadays, it seems that Wine Country is just as likely to refer to the region between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. I honestly wasn't aware of that before the film Sideways, though I've seen references to it since then (most recently on the Fox Network's heck's Kitchen, when Chef Ramsay took the aspiring contestants on a motor trip to "Wine Country" from L.A.).

Steven

We already have a Chopin Chardonnay -she posts here regularly.

Haha- well who can resist that?
Actually I am hoping that my husband and I can make our own Chopin Chardonnay- we have most everything we need except the time!
Might be a good project for 2010.
Now, what would be the characteristics of a true "Chopin" Chardonnay?

I was hoping "our" Chardonnay would show up!

Hmm, I don't know the vocabulary that's usually used when discussing oenology... a Chopin wine might be delicate but profound, subtle, possibly slightly fruity, deep purple in hue, thoroughly amusing, exceptionally complex....

Elene

Well He liked Tokay (or Tokaji) as it is here. We might start there. It's the only specific wine I remember him mentioning in his letters. Apparently he was trying to buy a stock of it and the merchant in question would only ship him about twice as much as he wanted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji

So there he was, living in France- what must have been (?) at least one of the wine-making capitals of the world- and his favorite was a Hungarian, sweet wine? I guess it's not too surprising, given his sweet tooth.
I wonder if he would have liked our sweet Muscadine (scuppernong) wines?

Well, tokay was apparently popular in Poland so he may have encountered it early on as a child. It also comes in sweet and dry. He wrote back home from his travels that he and Tytus had had a good dinner at an inn and finished two bottles of rhenish. Most rhine wines I know of are sweet so - - -

His liver must have been working relatively well at that time....

I assume big macho Tytus drank the lion's share of it.

Have websites "devoted" to Chopin been discussed or reviewed here? There's one that, in my opinion, is notably flawed called Chopin Music. I've been aware of it for a while—it was mentioned in a thread in the Pianist Corner in connection with its overall credibility (specifically the outlandish claim that the Etude 25/12 contains "a full four-voice contrapuntal line that is both harmony and melody")—but I didn't realize until now how specious the content is generally.

I can't say that this site is completely worthless, but errors, misinformation and opinions presented as fact can be found in abundance throughout. This excerpt from the page called Chopin's Works is very representative of the poor writing, intellectual sloppiness and lack of critical thinking that are so pervasive:


If this were the innocuous and inconspicuous fansite of an ardent but misguided enthusiast, it could easily be disregarded. Unfortunately, even Wikipedia in its article on Chopin offers a link to the site, and the author/webmaster apparently has delusions of grandeur and pretensions of importance. From the Links page:


Chopin Music isn't an authority on Chopin at all; it's an embarrassment! If Chopin were an obscure composer who merited greater recognition in whatever form, maybe we might be grateful even for such an extravagantly flaky website. But Chopin's fame is massive, and in traditional published media we have the impeccable scholarship of musicologists like Eigeldinger, Kallberg, Rink, Samson and Walker. What a shame that one of the most prominent Internet destinations for information about Chopin and his music should be so frankly dismal.

Steven

I've been to that site on occasion, but not very much- initially, I was interested in reading the "study guides" to the etudes, which seemed like they could possibly be helpful to a newcomer; they certainly are detailed in some cases. As I've only seriously delved into 10/3 and TNE 1 so far, I had not formed an opinion on the remainder of the etude technical descriptions.

In contrast to the etudes, the "study guides" to the other categories of his works consist of merely a few sentences of description of the main features of each piece, the author's impressions, and some commentary. I bristled at this sentence in the description of the 27/2 nocturne:

IF not more??

And don't even think about doing the Trivia Quiz!

On the whole- it seems mainly useful as a very superficial overview of Chopin and his works, not to be taken as the only- or even the main- source of information. A total newcomer to Chopin may find it to be a useful starting point, although I agree that much of it should be taken with the proverbial grain (cupful?) of salt.

Yes, all that-- but excuse me, do we really mean to apply the term "impeccable scholarship" to Kallberg? Maybe we do, but I have a little bit of bad feeling about that guy.

The "Chopin Music" site is disturbing in a number of ways, but it's clear from a glance at their forum that there are even MORE of us out there.

The instigator of the site doesn't write quite like a native English speaker. He identifies himself as Acadian-- I guess that means he's a type of Canadian francophone (as opposed to an American Cajun)? I don't know.

Elene