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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
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....
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
Chopin’s music is all I need to look into my soul.
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.
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.
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
Last edited by loveschopintoomuch; 11/09/0904:18 PM.
Chopin’s music is all I need to look into my soul.
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
Chopin’s music is all I need to look into my soul.
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.
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!
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!
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:
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.
![[Linked Image]](https://www.pianoworld.com/forumpicts/MOYD12/MOYD_789012.gif)
You are so very deserving and, of course, extremely talented.
but which contestant are you? (i.e. LA)