70904 for PDF 11/05 - Ivory Classics

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Fryderyk Chopin portrait-coin by Antoine Bovy, 1837 dous tragedy. He is a composer par excellence of inexhaustible variety in infinite detail. Chopin’s first published composition, in 1817 at the age of eight, was a Polonaise, and in the next five years he followed that with three more. Altogether there are sixteen Polonaises for piano solo, although the standard collections usually contain only eleven, of which four are posthumous publications. In addition, there is the Grande Polonaise, Opus 22 with orchestra accompaniment, to which Chopin added an introductory unaccompanied Andante Spianato. He also wrote the Polonaise, Opus 3, for cello and piano. The polonaise is a Polish processional dance in 3/4 time, and moderate in tempo. According to Grove’s Dictionary, “the French name dates back to the 17th century, a period during which three French princesses in succession became consorts of Polish kings and French customs and the French language were current at the court.” In its numerous forms the polonaise served both as a peasant dance and for court ceremonies. The Polonaise Fantaisie in A-flat Major, Opus 61, composed in 1845-46, was Chopin’s last largescale composition for the piano. In a letter to his family of December 1845 Chopin, already seriously ill with tuberculosis, wrote. “I should now like to finish my violoncello sonata, barcarolle and something else I don’t know how to name.” The title he eventually did provide demonstrates the work’s hybrid name: rhythms and other elements of the Polonaise are blended into a very free, almost improvisatory structure. Franz Liszt characterized the work as “marked with feverish and restless anxiety” and found it dominated by “a deep sadness, broken constantly by startled movements, by sudden alarms, by disturbed rest.” Without a doubt it is one of Chopin’s most profound and moving compositions, and – 8 –
as James Huneker once remarked, “a work that unites the characteristics of superb and original manipulation of the Polonaise form, the martial and the melancholic.” During his visit to Vienna, Chopin wrote: “I have acquired nothing particularly Viennese; and I still cannot play waltzes.” Perhaps he could not play waltzes in the traditional Viennese ballroom manner, but he certainly could compose dance poems in that form. His waltzes were probably inspired by Johann Strauss I (the father), whose popularity was at a peak when Chopin came to Vienna. Some of Chopin’s waltzes are stylized dances and could be suited for the ballroom, others, however, are lyric poems in waltz-time, which some biographers have described as “dances of the soul.” All of them are characterized by aristocratic elegance. The Waltz in A flat Major, Opus 42 is one of the most beautiful and brilliant of the Chopin waltzes. By some writers it is acclaimed to depict the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the eve of Waterloo, described in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Robert Schumann, in speaking of it, regards it as a salon piece of the noblest kind, and if played for dancers, states that “half the ladies should be countesses at least.” Shura Cherkassky plays this work as an encore to his recital with gusto and panache and a true Romantic sensibility. 12 Hofmann: Kaleidoskop, Op.40, No.4 Josef Casimir Hofmann was born in Cracow, Poland, January 20, 1876. His mother was a singer. His father, Casimir Hofmann, was professor of harmony and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory, conductor of the opera, and a composer of operettas. Young Josef studied the piano with his father. When he was six years old he played in public at a charity concert in Warsaw. At age nine he gave concerts in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and later he played in Vienna, Paris, and London. He came to the United States in 1887 and made his first appearance in New York on November 28 of that year. It was a “private recital for the press” given at Wallack’s Theatre, “before a representative gathering of literary, musical, and dramatic people to the number of 200, when the new world heard for the first time the piano played in the most masterly manner by a child only a few months over ten years old” thus Henry Krehbiel in the New York Tribune of the day after. “The audience,” Krehbiel wrote, “saw a pleasant and robust looking boy, dressed in dark gray jacket and pair of knickerbockers, and with an enormous sailor collar to his shirt, reaching halfway down his back. He acknowledged with perfect ease and self-possession the applause that greeted him, and took his seat at one piano, his father at another. The first number was the Variations by Saint-Saëns on a Theme by Beethoven, for – 9 –
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70904 for PDF 11/05 - Ivory Classics

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