Nice line, but baloney of course.

That's great news Mr. MOCHOROWSKI!!!?!??! That's quite interesting Mark! Nice to know a tiny bit more about you!

Best of luck with the contest and I do hope to see you live (BTW, Poland is not far from Greece... Why not come over for a few days? as a hard earned vacation?)

Hey Nikolas, welcome to the thread!

Yes, that's me -- and it would be great if you could come.

Dr. Kallberg paid a great visit to this thread on Pianist Corner, about the late Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68 #4.

I'm sorry to say that although I'd heard Rubinstein's recording of 68/4 numerous times, I'd never paid enough attention to that piece to realize that it had an extra section compared to the editions I had! Now I have the National Edition, so I have the version Rubinstein played. Which has been around since I was 5. Sheesh.

Spending time with "my" harpsichord has got me wondering again whether Chopin ever played Scarlatti, and if so, what he thought of his work. To the best of my knowledge, we have no written record of Chopin giving any opinions about that. There is only a reference in the fake Delfina letters, as far as I know. I have no direct information on this myself, either. Jeff, or anyone?

Elene

Fairly OT, though there is a link to "Fryderyk Chopin's Poland":
Poland bans Monsanto GMO corn

More intelligence there than in the US at the moment. Go Poland.

Elene

This week's 'Building a Library' slot on BBC Radio 3 featured Chopin's Mazurkas. For those that don't know it, 'Building a Library' is a weekly feature on Radio 3's 'CD Review' programme in which one of their regular panel of critics, musicians and academics gives a personal survey of the available recordings of a particular work, and recommendations for your library. The great thing about it is that it is available as a podcast, and that the podcasts stay up on the website indefinitely.

This week the quirky but wonderful David Owen Norris surveyed recordings of the Mazurkas. Here's the link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bal

Thank you very much - I'd missed that.

Yeh, thanks.

A couple of days ago I took a Duncan dance class, that is, based on the work of Isadora Duncan, one of the inventors of modern dance. Most of the music was Chopin, with a little Schubert, Schumann and Mozart thrown in. Isadora particularly used the mazurkas, I'm told, though not with actual mazurka steps. We danced to a mazurka or two and a couple of waltzes, plus 25/1, something it might not have occurred to me to choreograph. The teacher provided filmy tunics to go over our tank tops, so that we looked rather like a collection of animated Greek statues, though perhaps less well-proportioned.

It was SO hard to stand still and listen to what we were supposed to do next while mazurkas and waltzes were playing!

Elene

In the movie "Loves of Isadora," she dances to Chopin's Waltz in A-flat, Op. 42. It brought the piece to life for me more than ever before -- and I immediately went and started learning it.

P.S. Love the "perhaps less well-proportioned" part!
(Including the exact right placement of the hyphen.)

Of course it's not hard to be perhaps-less-well-proportioned than Greek statues, and therefore no crime.

(And I think that's how we do the hyphenation in this slightly-different construction!)

I don't know anything about this guy, but I really enjoyed his performance of Chopin's 2nd sonata!!

Who is he, and how did you happen to come across him?

(BTW, I listened to some of it, and I agree.)

I was just searching for recordings of it on YouTube, and just clicked on it. The username was "ClassicalUploads" so I thought it might be a big name. Turns out that I was wrong, but it's still amazing!

I know nothing about him, except his name is Carlisle Beresford. Here's a short bio on him. http://www.sipc2010.org/competitors.html

So I was practicing 27/1, and my mother came along and said, "That's a pretty piece. Who wrote it?" (*facepalm*) Of course she got it in one guess. "The left hand part is diabolical," I told her. "It doesn't sound very hard," she replied. When I showed her what one actually has to do to play it, she was suitably awed, but isn't it nicer when we can play something that has a zillion notes but isn't actually very demanding, and everyone is so impressed?

Did I tell you I had my first harpsichord lesson in over 30 years last week? It was wonderful. I was afraid the teacher would see me as somehow The Enemy or something since I spend so much time with Romantic-era piano music, but it wasn't like that at all. In fact, most of what she was asking me do to and most of her description of harpsichord technique was amazingly like what my piano teacher has been trying to convey for the past few days. Except for having to get myself to play much more non-legato, I don't have to make much of a brain-shift at all. Everything seems to be working together beautifully. (*sigh of relief*)

Elene

I just came home from seeing the movie "Prometheus". If you see it, you will be pleased to hear a little Chopin. One of the preludes I think.

He's everywhere.

The series finale of House, MD ended with Louis Prima's song "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)." Which includes the bit of the Funeral March that seems to be known all over the planet.

Elene

I really do like Chopin, but I guess I've never oozed about him publicly, as he is one of many composers I love and consider absolutely great and genius.

But my goodness, I'm listening to Shura Cherkassky play the D Flat Nocturne 27/2, the Barcarolle, and now the 3rd Ballade, and it's SUCH a revelation!!!

.....................

My teacher recommended this article by Jeffrey Chappell:

What Is the Shape of a Phrase?

It used to puzzle me that Chopin would create phrases out of such odd numbers of notes, 13 or 27 or 69.5 or sometimes what seemed like approximately 10,000, against 3 or whatever. Eventually it was made clear to me that each phrase is a shape, rather like a ribbon that bends along the page and through the ear, and those seemingly arbitrary quantities of notes are exactly as many as are needed to fill up the shape.

Here, also, is Chappell's take on a concept we know Chopin was concerned with in teaching:

Total Freedom In Music

Elene

Those were great articles. Thanks for posting!!

Don't you remember him? Or maybe you didn't know what he looks like?

Yes and no.

IMO he was a very mixed bag.
But I realize I speak from a somewhat weak position when I say that.

Anyway....among other things, he was giving one of our very fine pianists input/criticism that I felt could have been destructive if it hadn't been countered -- including because he ignored how little time there was before an upcoming performance, and also that he just wasn't giving credit for how excellent the playing was.

Yeah, I remember that thread.

I think Angelina might know him, but I might be mistaken. She was the first who knew he had voluntarily gone and they are exactly the same age and from Canada, so they might have met at some contest or masterclass.

Yes, He is everywhere. I ran across this odd little snippet in a detective story. A pianist in the story made some reference to Liszt as once having introduced Chopin as being from another planet. Anyone recognize that reference? (Something from Liszt's Life of Chopin perhaps?)

Liszt saying that Chopin seemed to be from another planet* rings a bell, but I can't think where we might have seen that.

While cleaning some old files out of my netbook, I came across this link to a biography of Zygmunt Krasinski at Google Books:

Krasinski bio

I had found it a couple of years ago while looking for more information about Delfina Potocka. It's written in a histrionic, Romantic tone that compares to, say, Berlioz' letters. Glad we don't write like that anymore.

Elene

*trying to imagine what that planet might be like

The author posted a link to this on the Piano Forum. It's worth at least skimming. I found it interesting and thought it deserved a wider audience. The Sound of Chopin's Pianos

Hope you don't mind my linking here to my video in the Cliburn amateur video contest:



It has Chopin's E minor Waltz and Horowitz's little-known "Danse Excentrique." The Horowitz is getting more attention, but the Chopin is better played.

Love the Waltz in E minor!!!

Hey, Mark, those were both really nice.