And then I told my husband about the ceramic noses, and asked if we ought to immortalize his own heroically-proportioned schnoz this way. "It would probably make a lot of $$$$," he replied. "If it was done up to snuff."

Definitely time to leave the computer and go practice....

Elene

Your good luck ceremony sounds a lot like the one with which maried women who want children do: They go to the Shiva temples, make an offering, say a prayer, and rub the lingam with kun kum.

Reading a book takes so long that you can listen to the works you've been reading about. Having taken a break from music books, I can still listen to Chopin... while I read Agatha Christie stories, and also shop the better renderings... and even get a couple or three of scores that I will be lucky to be able to play a fraction of.

I wonder if I'll get up a repertory of strange and peculiar songs that I will be able to play only parts of.

Cleff: I can never do anything else but listen to Chopin's music. It demands my full attention, and I give it gladly.

As far as what critics have said about Chopin's music, I totally agree with Jeff. I listen with my ears and my heart, and no expert can tell me what is lovely or beautiful or worthwhile, etc. And what is so great about his music is that every time I listen to it, I discover something new.

I hope Ohlsson comes to your area.

Kathleen

Exactly the way He wrote.

LA, I just voted for you.

When I was a teenager and was writing a great deal, I had to have a recording of the nocturnes playing in order to settle down to work. Now I seem to need either quiet or something more like white noise.

Elene

Silly question, but how did you vote, because it said you can't until November 24th, or am I mistaken? I really want to vote and support our house competitor.

Excellent performance by the way.

Gosh, were we we suppose to vote? I will have to go back on again and vote...twice. After all, I am from Chicago.

I have been working on my course for the class I am (hopefully) teaching in Feb. Good grief, I have forgotten so much as to how to use Audacity and how to create a slide show, etc. I want to present some visuals and a bit of Chopin's history, for one has to know some of his life and some of the people in it in order to appreciate his music. However, the more I think of it, this might not necessarily be so. I intend to devote most of the class to his music...it will REIGN SUPREME!!

Kathleen

I voted for you, LA. But just once, darn!!

Oh, one more thing. My sister and I are going to see Hershey Felder perform his Beethoven this Sunday at the Drury Lane Theater in Chicago. I am so excited. We were also going to see Chopin in December, but he canceled all of poor Frederick. I think to make more room for Ludwig. Just a guess.

Kathleen

You sign up here to receive a voting ballot.
http://www.cliburn.org/index.php?page=guestbook
Votes are being accepted between now and November 24th.


Thank you all for the support!!!

We all will be rooting for you! You are so very deserving and, of course, extremely talented.

Kathleen

Just a bump.

Kathleen

My order was canceled for the book on Chopin's ornamentation. It's probably just as well; right after I ordered it, it occurred to me that I had access to the same sources as that author, thanks to all the scholars involved, and so I didn't really need it.

Elene

Sorry for even a stupider question but which contestant are you? (i.e. LA)

I'm in the youtube contest as well, so I'm not going to vote for you but I'd love to know who you are......

Oh dang, Elene, I was seriously considering getting the book on ornamentation and looked forward to a review from you.

On that topic of Chopin's earlier works, I'm a big fan of the Op. 4 Sonata (and have written about it on numerous occasions here and in the Pianist Corner). I love it from start to finish with none of the ambivalence I feel toward parts of Op. 35 and Op. 58.

Elene, the structural issues that have been cited (at least with respect to the opening Allegro maestoso) include (1) lack of contrasting key signatures in the exposition, where both the primary and secondary themes are presented in c minor, (2) an "incorrect" (or at least thoroughly unorthodox) choice for the key of the recapitulation, which is in b-flat minor, and (3) the repetitiveness of phrases that are four bars long, which is said to impart a feeling of "squareness" and monotony.

Jeff, there's something you might possibly be able to shed light on. James Huneker made a curious statement about Op. 4: "[I]t was praised by the critics because not so revolutionary as the Variations, Op. 2." His words imply that the works were published (and thus reviewed) contemporaneously, but Op. 4 wasn't published until 1851!

Steven

Really!!! I always thought that having an opus number meant the work was being published, which of course for Op. 4 would have meant that it came out in the 1820's.
Interesting factoid!

Welcome, Mark.

Your comment raises another question of interest. At the height of his career, Chopin would have had legions of fans to whom it was obvious that Op. 4 was missing from his corpus of work. Was there public awareness that it represented a large-scale work that Chopin had chosen to withdraw? Was there great curiosity surrounding it and "buzz" when it was finally published a year and a half after his death? Was its reception as cruel as the treatment it's received since then?

There's a nice live performance of Sofya Gulyak playing Op. 4 in its entirety on YouTube. Here's the first movement:



Steven

For what it's worth here's what Wiki has to say about young Fred's "homework" for Elsner. It doesn't enlighten any about the publication history though.
Wiki Chopin op 4

Yes -- I'm listening to that video up there as we speak.
It was just the other day that I realized for the first time that this sonata can be worthwhile, and in fact, in the right hands it's VERY worthwhile.
I came across a performance on youtube that wasn't even labeled with the pianist -- turned out it was Idil Biret (I think). Her performance was superb too.
BTW we're sort of neighbors (sort of) -- I'm down the road in Larchmont.

P.S. That's a great point, to wonder if there was curiosity in that time about the OMISSION of the opus number.
I think there had to be, and if someone wanted to spend some hours or months searching through archives (or attics), I bet they'd find something on it.

Mark - hope to see you as a regular in this thread too since I know you also play much Chopin music.

Steven: Huneker made lots of curious statements. I tend to take most of what he says with a cellar of salt.

You're absolutely right: the Sonata wasn't published until 1851, so Huneker is getting his chronology confused.

The story of the publication of the Sonata is interesting, actually. Chopin first tried to have it published in 1828 in Leipzig (we don't know with what publisher), and then again in 1830 with Haslinger in Vienna. Nothing happened, which irritated Chopin. We next read about it in his correspondence in 1839, when Chopin reports a rumor from his father that Haslinger had published the Sonata. Another letter in 1841 implies that Haslinger contacted Chopin about publishing the Sonata; and four years later he reported that Haslinger had sent him printed proofs of the Sonata. It's clear from the plate number of the Haslinger edition that the Viennese firm actually prepared the piece for publication in late 1840, but then withheld it for publication until after Chopin's death.

Jeff

Steven and Mark: I haven't found much evidence of curiosity about the gap in opus numbers. These kinds of gaps were not all that unusual among composers of the time, and could occur for all kinds of reasons (including lack of attention by publishers). Since not terribly much attention was paid in his lifetime to the works Chopin published before he arrived in Paris (with the exception of op. 2, that is), it isn't surprising that there's no evidence of a fuss over the missing opus 4.

There's even better evidence of lack of concern for a later piece. The opus number for the Preludes (28) is out of sequence. Chopin originally intended it for a four-hand sonata that he (apparently) never finished (though I've made the argument that it is possible that the funeral march goes back to this 4-hand sonata): he offered it for sale to Breitkopf & Hartel in Leipzig in 1835 (together with opp. 22-27). Between 1836 and the eventual publication of the Preludes in 1839, no one noticed the missing opus 28 between the publication of the Nocturnes, op. 27 and the Impromptu, op. 29.

Jeff

YOU WILL INDEED!

Interesting.....I never knew that gaps in opus numbers were all that common -- mean for an extended period of time, as was apparently the case for Opus 4.

I agree that there's no reason to wonder if there would have been wonderment over the missing Op. 4 right at time, but SOON THEREAFTER could have been a different story, because, as I understand, it wasn't long before he was very much of note.

BTW.....Another (and famous) example of the out-of-sequence opus numbers is CHOPIN'S CONCERTOS. I don't know the dates but I do know that the "2nd" (Op. 21) was written before the "1st" (Op. 11).
IMO there's an additional level of interest to this because #2 really does seem like a more mature work, and so, except for the fact that we knew the actual sequence for a fact (and I THINK we do), we'd never suspect that anything was out-of-order.

"I have a wonderful bust of Chopin, in bronze... I would post a photo but still haven't figured out how to do it here. It used to be easy."

A two-step process, Kathleen. (1) upload the file to PW. This is the link; fill in the fields and show it which file to send:

http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/fileuploader2.html

PW will send you an e-mail with filename on the server. You can cut-and-paste the entire name from it and, using the Full Reply screen, click on the Enter an Image icon. Paste the filename in. That's it. It will be in your post.

Yes, it's a bit cumbersome, but not actually hard.

I do agree, and I've always thought this, too. I perceive the influence of Hummel (and therefore of Mozart) much more strongly in Op. 11; it seems rather Classical in character, whereas Op. 21 has a more lush and forward-leaning feel.

Steven

I didn't know about the lack of an Op. 4 until after the composer's death. Fascinating.

Concerto #1 has a relatively lush and heavy orchestration compared to #2, and does seem like a more mature and finished work, despite the great delights of #2 (which I wouldn't want to live without). I was under the impression that Fryc was told he ought to give the orchestra more to do after writing #2. Would that be correct?

Mark, best wishes to you in the contest too. I admire all of you who can even consider entering a contest like that.

Elene

Yes -- Hummel seems right-on for the E minor concerto.
And what would be a similarly right-on mention for the F minor?
NOTHING, I think, or not much.

BTW.....Huneker got mentioned up there. A funny thing about him: he would sometimes indicate about particular Chopin works that they reminded him of other composers, always (I think) with an impression that he was giving a compliment to Chopin. When I first read that stuff, and I had never heard of most of those other composers, I assumed that they must have been GREATER than Chopin. I was very surprised to learn, bit by bit, that some of these other composers of whom Huneker seemed so excited to find hints in Chopin were nothing compared to him. Example: MEYERBEER.

I also remember that Huneker would sometimes summarily dismiss some works of Chopin as being lousy, including the last movement of the B minor sonata.

Thanks for the welcome and for the wishes, Elene!
BTW......what's the picture in your sig?

Omigod.......I've only been here for 1 day and I see that I have >70 posts.
I think that officially make me an addict too.