Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Just for those totally devoted to Chopin

Very eerie and well done. Seen other vids like this where they take photos of portraits of c.19th people and make them talk- but this looks so real!
I wonder what Chopin's real voice sounded like.

The one fleeting description I've heard of his voice was that it was low and husky, so they may have gotten it right.

Edwardian, do you happen to remember which 19th-c. personages appeared in other animations like this? I'd love to check them out. This one was scarily well done, even though one has to make a little extra leap to imagine Chopin speaking fluent Italian (not an extreme leap, since he did study that language in his youth and spend some time in Italy later). Although the voice is quite deep it didn't seem implausible to me.

It did seem odd that they had him say he didn't travel much. Far less than Liszt, certainly, but far more than most people of his time.

Elene

George Sand also has something to say:

The Chopin is by far the more skillfully done. Perhaps because they had a better pose to work with.

Yes, the original photo is important.

This is the one they used for George Sand (although the background is different):



The photo looks less natural than Chopin's too.

George just isn't in an very conversational pose, she's in more of an "I'm having my picture taken pose."

Heavens to Betsy. No, the Sand didn't come out as convincingly. But at least she was in fact able to speak Italian well.

How could they say that Chopin was prejudiced against women who were involved with literature? All his sisters wrote, and Emilia was said to have been brilliant at it, even at her tender age. That wasn't what put him off about Mme Sand at first, I'm sure. It's a little confusing, though, because he did say something disparaging about her being a bluestocking-- strange for someone who showed a decided preference for the company of very intelligent females.

Elene

Of course at this late date we have not idea how seriously or not he made that remark. Marie d'Agoult was a novelist as well and as you said he (and Liszt too for that matter) did have a decided preference for brainy women. I think he was a bit put off by the idea of George as all the more outre facts of her public persona had undoubtedly preceded her. She probably sounded like Tugboat Annie to him.

Yes. My thought is that he disliked excess, flamboyance, and notoriety for its own sake, not to mention preferring at least the appearance of social acceptability. Once he got to know Mme Sand, of course he revised his opinion of her.

(I don't know who Tugboat Annie was!)

Elene

You're too young. (I apparently remember the TV series from the 50's)

Tugboat Annie

Ain't Wiki wonderful - -

Boże mój, what strange things do happen on the interwebs! Look at this:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2092584.html#Post2092584


Elene

There is a sublime performance of the third Ballade in the Members' Recordings section of the Pianist Corner by an Estonian pianist with whom I'm not familiar. It would be worth mentioning in its own right, but it's all the more so because it was 'critiqued' in a laughably patronizing way by someone who has posted in this Devoted to Chopin thread.

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2093959/Jaak.html#Post2093959

Well, I wasn't trying to start a lot of criticism of other posters or complaining (or was I? after all, complaining tends to be fun), only to show how quickly and easily confusion can grow on this here Web thing. I was both annoyed and amused by this odd conversation, which grew out of a piece of art by Mary-Rose and a post from my very own blog.

I do like Jaak's performance of the ballade very much, and the few weaknesses it has will probably get worked out.

When Hershey Felder was doing his appearances as Chopin a few years ago, I wasn't aware of him, and I only heard of him because of our friends here, but yesterday my mother and I had the opportunity to see him turn into Leonard Bernstein. Here's part of what I just posted about it elsewhere:

"I was interested in Felder because he had greatly impressed some friends of mine with his one-man show on Chopin a few years ago, and I'm enthusiastic about Bernstein as well. Felder is a man who can play the piano, sing, lecture, compose, and write, and do a lot of it all at once. It was over an hour and a half of just him, with massive amounts of high-speed, high-energy verbiage and a wide range of music, including an impression of Lenny's father yelling at him in Russian, Yiddish, and English all at the same time. The amount of preparation and rehearsal needed must be incredible, and he has more than one show running at a time; he's still doing his old Gershwin presentation, and has a new one related to Lincoln, too. (I don't know if he's doing the Beethoven anymore.)

"Although I had read and heard the story of how Bernstein left his wife, and how she died, many times, I still sat in stunned silence with the rest of the audience as he described it. Felder connected surely and masterfully with us.

"My only complaint is that his hair was totally wrong."

This clip doesn't really give you the feeling of the live performance, and perhaps you can quibble with his singing, but here's the idea:

Felder as Bernstein

Back when I first heard about him, I looked for videos and there weren't any. There are a number of them now. Here's one from his Chopin presentation, but you can't see his face:

Felder as Chopin

If we could see his face, we'd see this (a shot attributed to the Tucson Citizen):




I see that our friend Jeff Kallberg has been his music history consultant.

Elene

Do you really need to drag your fight over here? Polyphonist is very accomplished, probably a professional, and none of his criticism could have been considered gratuitous or vicious. He certainly wasn't patronizing. On the contrary he showed definite respect for the poster by assuming his desire and ability to improve and by spending the time to address specific areas for improvment, not simply waving him off with a limp and idle, and useless, "that's nice." The only fault I can see is that he might better have addressed this in a PM.

I'm just glad the young whippersnappers are still interested in playing Chopin.

And I still want us to play nice around here.

Elene

I've come to loathe Polyphonist. An IDIOT. Remember I wanted a conversation about Op. 52? Once he or she got around to inviting me to approach him or her by private message, and I did so. Multiple paragraphs of well considered information and queries. You know what I got back? Two sentences.

You know, you all need to get off the high horses about 'playing nice'. The world is not a nice place, and that goes for most of what I've observed at Piano World as well.

What have you actually heard of Polyphonist, Frycek? How exactly do you know that he or she is accomplished? How would you even know how to judge whether someone is accomplished or not given your own limitations?

And for your information, Polyphonist pulled the same crap in the Pianist Corner by eviscerating a performance of Islamey. And the folks there RIPPED HIM A NEW ONE. So don't effing lecture me.

You're out of line, Goomer, being truly hurtful, and if you wish to start attacking me, or the completely undeserving Frycek, I won't go along and encourage that. Please get some rest, and I hope you are feeling kinder and better tomorrow. Seriously.


Elene

Don't you start barging in here lecturing me. You drag a fight over here to me, you're going to get one.
And what the heck do you know about my limitiations? Only what I have, in honesty stated. I know I've been playing the piano for more or less fifty years and I at least recognize when someone knows what they're talking about and when they don't. Maybe Polyphonist comes off as a bit arrogant. The knowledgeable usually do. You like to LOATHE other people. You like call them IDIOTS. You're not interested in respect. You say the world isn't a nice place. Piano World isn't a nice place. Of course the World isn't a nice place, nor is PW, necessarily. We have no real control over The World, it's "niceness" or lack of it, only of our own actions in it and those can be as "nice" or a nasty as we want them to be. Apparently you prefer the nasty. You certainly seem to enjoy spreading it about. Why else would you name yourself after an anal lesion? Well, go wallow in it.

Sorry for the late reply Elene- on you tube there are John Keats animations :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAE1Aa6SB_k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbeGlWcgbE0

I forget who else there is- think it was Oscar Wilde.