Kathleen: I have been thinking and writing a great deal about Lucrezia, and hashing the matter out with our MR, but I have made little headway in understanding it, I'm afraid. But one thing I can say is that since Sand typically read her current work to family and friends in the evenings, it would have looked exceedingly odd to everyone if she had not read that book. It would have looked like she had something to hide.

I could not make myself read Eisler's biography because of what I perceived as its relentless, depressing negativity. Not to mention her description of Chopin's eyes as "rabbity," etc. Perhaps I need to get past that.

Elene

I haven't read it, but what does that even mean? In my experience, it's not an adjective that anyone would choose and expect it to be understood.

Rabbits are sweet, gentle and intelligent. I have a sense that she meant to imply something else, which gives me a negative feeling toward her (and her editor).

Steven

p.s. Improvisation would be a great request, but only if I had a means of recording it! I've often said that I need the immersion of repeated listenings to appreciate something to the fullest, and that's as true for our Chopin's music as for anyone else's.

In our tardis we will of course have state of the art recording equipment so sophisticated that Our Friend will never suspect he's being "captured."

I wonder what Chopin would have thought about the experience of recording his own playing (or being recorded), if he could have. Would he have liked the process? Was he meant to be a live performer or a recording/studio artist?

I think Chopn would have expired from terminal Red Dot fever if he'd been forced to record. He was an utter perfectionist. One of the wonderful things about a live performance is when it's over, it's over. Recordings can always be better. He'd have driven himself (and everyone else involved) crazy. He was meant for the intimacy of the salon, or even better, his own studio.

What might save him as a recording artist is the fact that one can go back and fix things with modern techniques... but he would need a strong-minded recording engineer and/or producer who would be willing to drag him bodily out of the studio if necessary!

So Steven's idea of recording him surreptitiously would be best.

Somebody please get to work on inventing that time machine!

Elene

Moravec has my favorite interpretation of the Ballade No. 1:
Ivan Moravec performs Chopin\'s Ballade No. 1 in g minor

Welcome: DDS24P&FOP87

Thank you for Moravec's interpretation, and I agree that it is heaven to the ears. We're happy that you've joined in, and please post often.

Chopin fighting the "red dot" fever? I don't think he would for the same reason most of us do...fear of making a mistake. He wouldn't give a thought to that, IMO. However, as Frycek mentioned, he would not be happy with the recording because he would love to change a bar here or there or perhaps a whole section. BUT if he did record, I would imagine (and this is a fantasy) that his albums would break every single record out there. I can just picture him at the Grammy Awards, waiting in the audience, sitting next to some hip-hop guys or country-western people. Yikes, that would be a sight. But, I doubt that he would be interested in the award itself; perhaps just the money that the sales brought in.

I received my copy of Pianist yesterday. I'd like to share some of the articles with you.

First of all, someone in Kent thought that the writer (from the U.S.) in the previous issue, who really bashed Zimerman, was totally unfair. This writer thought that Zimerman had a right to his opinions about the United States and both its foreign and domestic policies.[/b] Yes, of course, this is certainly true, but I wonder what this writer would have thought about Zimerman if he had said the same thing about England. Also mentioned---that Zimerman chose to live in Switzerland and not Poland (his native land) would have nothing to do with how the Poles respected or felt about him. That they would still be very proud of him.[/b] Well, how in the heck does this writer know what the Poles feel? Did she interview each and every one of them? I agree that he is an extremely marvelous and talented pianist, but there are so many who are just as talented and who don't hate the U.S. I recently read that he had cancelled all his tours of the U.S. I imagine there were a lot of disappointed people out there, and perhaps if they knew the reason, it just might change their opinion of him.

What Mr. Zimerman doesn't seem to understand is that the citizens of the U.S. (many of whom would love to attend one of his concerts) ARE NOT[/b] the ones who make policies. That responsibility rests soley with the politicans. If ever there was a group of people who are more arrogant and insensitive to the needs of this country, it is they. We vote, hoping and believing that things will change, but they never do. The only things that change are the names and faces. I am so SICK AND TIRED of taking the blame for things over which I have no control or say. We do not live in a democracy, as so many think...but in a republic. And there's a really big difference between the two. I have to get off my soapbox or else I'll be writing for two days.

Now on to the more pleasant items in the magazine. MaryRose[/b]...Angela Lear wrote a very interesting and wonderful article in response to someone who was wondering why her edition of Chopin's F minor waltz was different from the one published in the last issue. Ms. Lear went on (in length) to explain that much of the music by Chopin that we play today was not written by him. Fontana completely disregarded Chopin's wishes about not publishing his half-completed or mere sketches of music. Chopin also begged many, for whom he wrote dedicated pieces, not to make them public. What I found so surprising was that only eight of his waltzes were published during his lifetime. This means the rest and so many more were tampered with by not only Fontana, but by publishers and editors who wanted to make a buck. I got very depressed reading this because now I will always wonder if I am playing Chopin or someone else.

Just another item: In the Q & A section, a person wrote to Tim Stein, who is a well-respected teacher and very qualified to answer questions concerning music and the piano. The question was something like this. I often like to play for some of my friends. What rather short (so to be memorized) but impressive pieces would you recommend? Mr. Stein mentioned a couple of Burgmueller's studies. But then he said that playing anything by Chopin "should hopefully raise more than a few eyebrows and have the audience eating out of the palm of your hands." He recommended the preludes...the one in E minor, then perhaps the lovely and so well-known A major. He suggested coupling the A major with the C minor for a "really dramatic" ending.

I need to take this man's advice. I can play all three, but I need to polish them up a bit and commit them to memory (ugh!!).

That's it for me for now. Sorry this is so long.

My best,
Kathleen

Hi Kathleen - it's a coincidence that you mention the C minor Prelude as I have been feeling depressed about that one lately. There are one or two chords I just can't reach properly which puts me off playing the whole thing. That's a shame as it is one of my favourites. Can you reach them all?

Hi MaryRose:

Yes, I can play it, and yes, it was certainly a stretch for me when I learned it years ago. Are you using the one-finger for two notes trick?

For instance: Thye 3rd RH chord in measure 2, I use my thumb to lay across the Db and the Eb. The same holds true for the 3rd chord in the 8th measure, thumb on F and G.

I can only reach a 9th somewhat comfortably, if they are all white keys. After that...no way.

Good luck with this one. It is quite elegant albeit somewhat somber. But how I love when it changes moods, starting in the 5th measure. It almost breaks your heart with its loveliness.

My best,
Kathleen

THIS IS THE 4,000TH POST OF THIS THREAD! PLEASE FORGIVE ME, BUT I HAD TO BE THE ONE TO MAKE IT SO!!![/b] AND

Thank you all so much for helping us get this far. I have to feel this is an all-time record, anywhere on the internet. And how it pleases me to know that it's all about Chopin!! :3hearts:

Kathleen

Congratulations, Kathleen, on "the thread of threads!!!!"

angelo

Hi! I'm new to this forum and an admirer of Chopin's works as well.

Believe it or not, I first started to fall in love with his music while watching anime of all things! One of the character played a bit of his Op 66 and Op10/3... as soon i head the names of the pieces mention I looked them up in youtube and listened in silent wonder and appreciation...

I now have 1.4GB(I have yet to listen to all....) of his music and lots of music sheets courtesy of uTorrent (-->http://www.mininova.org/tor/1717854)..

I'm just a beginner, but i dream of playing his pieces one day...

mydnyt,

Your post reminded me that I haven't acknowledged the recent presence and contributions of some new faces around here.

Welcome, one and all!

Steven

4,000--- what a milestone! Congratulations Kathleen and everyone contributing to this great thread!

and of course, it would not be possible without such a fascinating subject!

Sophia

Lots of forums have bigger threads than this one - one forum I belong to has a thread that is over 36,000 messages long! But that's just quantity. We have quality, of course.

OMG: A thread of 36,000 messages! What in the world is the subject matter??

But as you said, we have quality in our beloved Chopin.

Kathleen

Re: the brief recent discussion of the "Chopin" section of Schumann's Carnaval:

According to a biographer of Schumann, Peter Ostwald, Chopin "never forgave Schumann for including his name and a parody of his musical style in Carnaval" For this statement Ostwald references the following:
Michalowski, K.,1980: "Frederic Chopin" in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol 4, London: Macmillan.

Now I love Schumann/s piano music and I find the Carnaval piece delightful. I might also mention, it is often not played "agitato" as Schumann instructs.

Also, congratulations for your 4,000+ posts on this thread!

Hi babushka:

That is very interesting about Chopin and his obvious dislike for Schumann. I always thought it was based, in part, on Schumann's quote about "Hats Off," and his sentimental music. I never could understand how Chopin could have held such ill-will for Schumann because Robert held him in such high regard.

I wonder if Chopin ever heard Schumann's piano concerto (one of my very favorites). Chopin, himself, often made fun of others, mimicking their outward charteristics, i.e., walk, talk, etc. I don't know that he did this with their music. We have often read how he liked to make fun of Liszt at the keyboard, which would have been hard to resist.

I know that Chopin disliked extremes in everything. He was a very proper person and disdained anything that was too obvvious or gauche. This part of his nature would seem to alienate many, and yet he was beloved by hundreds of people right up until his death. I think, with Chopin, he either disliked you or he loved you...no in between.

Come to think of it, he didn't have too many composers as friends. Could this have been some form of jealousy? Or perhaps just a dislike for their music? He and Delacroix were quite close, and yet Chopin did not care for Eugene's art.

Chopin is a very difficult person to understand. So many paradoxes and mysteries.

Thank you again for posting.

Kathleen

I am imagining trying to explain to Chopin what having 1.4 GB of his music means.

Elene

Maybe if you explain to him how much listening time that is, he might get a good enough idea. same with how many pages 100+MB of his sheet music is.

I don't know much of the composer himself, reading this thread however gave me lot of facts and trivia. I'm now looking up his biography.

Hi mydnyt:

I have 1.31 GB of Chopin's music on my iPod. That comes to 23.8 hours of listening time and covers 360 songs.

iPod (my daughter told me this) considers one song as 2.5 minutes. Chopin's music tends to run a bit longer than that, so that's why the number of songs are so many.

I also have different artists playing his music, i.e., Rubinstein, Ashkenazy and Lear (just to mention a few), so there are a lot of repeats.

Depending on where you are getting biographical information on Chopin, can sometimes be far from the truth. Even facts, considered to be without question, can also be invalid. It is difficult to find THE definiive biography of the man because every author tends to add his or her own slant on what they have researched or "borrowed" from another author.

But if you just want the bare bones of his life, Wikiopedia is fine. If you have any questions or are curious about something, we will try to help you out, if we can.

In the meantime, enjoy Chopin!

Kathleen

It is becoming so painful to follow this thread. Especially when topics change here and there.

I think it would be great if it could be turned into a real forum and then we can post threads on various aspects of Chopin and his music.

Hi May10Arpil: From your mouth to Frank's ears!

About a year ago, we begged, pleaded, cajoled and even tried to bribe the president (Frank) of this forum to let Chopin have his very own forum.

The reasons, as we gave him, were exactly what you have expressed and even more. Afterall, Chopin WAS the poet of the piano, so wouldn't you think that he deserved his very own place on this web site? Plus, look at the number of posts on this thread. Far and above anything else here. Also, it was difficult to keep the topics centralized in one location, for we often would post "on various aspects of Chopin and his music." (I hope you don't mind my using your very words.)

Well, many people on the forum did not agree. They, more or less, argued that if he had his own forum, why not Liszt or Beethoven or Bach, etc. I didn't see how Chopin could equate with someone like Beethoven, who did not compose excusively for the piano as Chopin did (with just a few exceptions).

What really gets me is that there is a game forum on this site!! How do games equate with the piano? Isn't Chopin a worthier subject than a game forum???

I tried making an index to some of the topics we covered on the thread (if you go to the very first page, you'll find it there) to help people nagivate, but after about 2,000 pages, it just got to be too much to handle.

So, your idea is not a new one but it is a good one and one we have wished for for a long time. But, the powers that be, don't seem to agree.

Thank you for writing, and we hope to hear from you again.

Kathleen

The idea of sepearate forum is interesting, but troublesome and controversial from my point of view.

The key to this thread is that it IS the thread of Adult Beginner's Forum. I know we are generally speaking all Piano World members, the interests and attitude, however, differs significantly between different branches of PW.

I can't really imagine how this thread would look if it was posted in Pianists Corner with many professional pianists there. I can't refrain from thinking that it would be jeopardized very quickly. I'm not very fond of Pianist corner because of the attitude toward newbies and beginners - without a technically proficient and well-structured question you can get nowhere.

If we could greate sub-forums to these already existent, it would be wonderful. Something like:

|-Adult Beginners' Forum
|-|-Chopin lovers
|-|-Recitals
|-Digital Pianos...

But it's, as far as I know, impossible here.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel in my veins it wouldn't be a very smart idea to branch completely from ABF, although the navigation in this thread is indeed getting tougher and tougher...

I hope I didn't offend anyone who is an active member of Pianists' Corner - if so, I hereby apologize!


M.

Dear Mati, I agree with you about Pianists' Corner. There is a lot of points-scoring and bullying there (although plenty of good writers too). Chopin's thread belongs here, and although it is meandering and unstructured that is part of its charm.

Kathleen - on my iPod each piece is called a 'song' regardless of length. If you divide the number of hours by 2.5 minutes it doesn't come out as the number of songs, does it?

As for Schumann - I've always thought his 'Chopin' piece from 'Carnaval' was more of a tribute than a parody.

I have never seen any souce material suggesting that Chopin didn't like Delacroix' work and wonder where this idea came from? And I'm not sure where they get the idea that Chopin had quite such distaste for poor Schumann, although he clearly wasn't a fan. As Kathleen says, biographies of Chopin are often inaccurate. And these myths are passed from one writer to the next until they are considered 'fact'.

The best place to learn about Chopin is from his own letters.

I agree with MaryRose about the Pianist Corner. There are some great people who hang out there,( Bruce, Mel, Steven and PianoJerome, just to name a few,) but it does intimidate many (including me). There is also some wonderful information to be gleaned from some of the posts. Just yesterday, I was reading a thread that was devoted to the topic of playinng slowly when first learning a piece and then the problems involved when one tries to get that piece up to tempo.

Here is the link to the discussion. It's a bit long but perhaps may be of value to some of you who are struggling with this.

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/2/18683.html (about halfway down the page)

I have to admit that some of the posts went over my head a bit, but there was one post that indicated how Chopin wanted his students to first learn a piece. Of course, it was a quote from a book (and we have discussed that we can't always rely on the validity of such), but what I found interesting (according to this quote) was that Chopin did not[/b] want his students to play runs and legato slowly and smoothly at first, but staccoto.

I am going to apply this principle to that run in the C#m nocturne, for I have exhausted every single option I know of. Right now, I have shorten it and am playing it with a tad of rubato (this was at the advice of my teacher, who knew that I had struggled with it for weeks and weeks). It sounds OK, but it bothers me that I have had to resort to such a short-cut. :rolleyes:

I also totally agree with MR that the best place to learn about Chopin is through his letters. Also, of course, my second recommendation would be the book by Eigeldinger, which does contain some "quotes" from his students. But again, who knows if these quotes are true.

However, I don't agree with MR that Chopin does not deserve his own forum. It would be wonderful to have sub-topics, such as:

Chopin's Music (this could be further divided into this preludes, etudes, waltzes, etc.)

Chopin's Method

His Early Years and Their Influence on Him

His Fiends and Acquaintances

His Time in Paris

Madame Sand

and so on.

I do know that it is very possible that people with much background and experience might post here, but perhaps we could learn something from them. AND we could also make is known that this forum is for those all[/b]: the experienced and those who are just starting out or returning. That way, we could avoid the risk of being afraid to post for fear that others would pounce on our lack of knowledge or technique, etc. AND, we could tell those who ignore this, that such put-downs have no place nor are they appreciated on the Chopin forum...for he is for all.

Well, what's the use of dreaming, when it won't come to pass.

I just wish there were some way I could go the indexing that I tried at the beginning, but the task is insurmountable now...with over 4,000 posts!

Kathleen

Mati, others have made observations similar to yours about the Pianist Corner (and I'm sure worse things have been said, too!). I like it because the topics tend to involve the kind of details and complexities that interest me most, and the discussions are 100% about classical piano. Frycek recently said something to the effect that despite the Pianist Corner's reputation for wolves, there are many shepherds there (and more amateurs than professionals, too, FWIW).

babushka, thanks for providing the information from Schumann's biography. It's vexing, of course, as it would never have occurred to me that Chopin could consider his portrayal in Carnaval to be a parody or that Schumann could have intended that. He depicted others, too, including Clara, Paganini and even himself (as Eusebius and Florestan). To me, the tone is one of genial fun—it's a carnival!—rather than meanness.

Steven

sotto voce, I can't deny what you are saying. Pianists' corner is full of extremly valuable threads and complex advice by people with great skills and knowledge, often willing to share. It's just almost always a fact that corners for proficient player are like hungry wolves from the point of view of people who are just starting and post simple and repetivive questions.

What I was trying to say is that ABF and Pianists' Corner coexist peacefully and benefit from each other in some way (mostly ABF benefits from PC in a matter of fact) and thats perfectly fine, but merging them (even with a single topic) might not work as peacefully.


M.

- a Freudian slip??