Chopin

[Bonobo]

My favourite pieces by Frederic Chopin:

Norwid, a poet of the epoch said: Chopin`s compositions are like cannons hidden in flowers.

Fully agreed on these ones:

Military Polonaise


Heroic


Revolutionary

[tufta]

Bonobo, while you are at Krakowskie Przedmiescie in Warsaw, and just opposite University of Warsaw (which campus is worth seeing anyway, and welcomes visitors) you may like to take a look at the Czapski's Palace (now housing Academy of Fine Arts) and visit the apartment inhabitated by Chopin while he was living in Warsaw. The so called: "Salonik Chopinow".

www.chopin.pl/zabytki/muzeum/salonik_en.html

Also, a litte futher South from there but very near, you just need to pass the Copernicus monument, there's Zamoyski's Palace at the corner of Nowy Świat and Świętokrzyska. As you know a poem by Norwid entitled 'Chopin's grandpiano' (Fortepian Szopena) mentiones a historic episode how the instrument used by the composer is thrown out of the window. It is from the second floor of this palace the Chopins piano was thrown out.

(You may also note an interesting error while visting the "Salonik Szopenow" - a note on the outside of the building says the pianoforte was throw out of the window there. Which is not true as in 1863 when the episode took place the Chopins did not live there already, and the famous grandpiano was moved to Frederick's sister apartment at Zamoyski's Palace)

[Bonobo]

I am coming with my two kids, I am not sure they will be interested in it, still too young ;D ;D ;D ;D I will keep your advice for future reference...

Sorry to change the subject, I have studied some maps, what is the best place in Warsaw to park your car? Not in a paid zone but still relatively close to the center? Do you know such places? When I went with my class on a trip last year, I remember the bus was waiting for us under the bridge near St. Anna`s Church, close to Zamkowy Square? Is it still working?

[locopolaco]

Chopin's music is so sad though but i sure love it. You can definitely feel the sadness in his heart through his compositions.

If you ever have a chance to attend the Chopin Competition at lazienki park, don't hesitate, it is awesome.

[Bonobo]

Jul 7, 2008 23:31:43 GMT 1 locopolaco said:

Chopin's music is so sad though but i sure love it. You can definitely feel the sadness in his heart through his compositions.

Hmm, isn`t it our modern impression? We know the historical context (partitions), we know about Chopin`s personal problems (de Sand) , and that he died of TB too early. Isn`t it so that we apply all those contexts to his music and tend to see it as sad?

I thought everything depends on the interpretation - a pianist may play something sadly or joyfully... It frequently happens at Chopin Competitions - some pianists are appreciated by jury and hated by the audience, and vice versa. A well-known example is Ivo Pogorelic - people loved him for his innovative style but the conservative jury turned him down.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Pogoreli%C4%87

Pogorelić won the Casagrande Competition in Terni, Italy in 1978 and the Montreal International Music Competition in 1980. However he became famous for the prize he didn't win. In 1980 he entered the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and was eliminated in the third round. One of the adjudicators, Martha Argerich, proclaimed him a genius and left the jury in protest.

If you ever have a chance to attend the Chopin Competition at lazienki park, don't hesitate, it is awesome.

You must be right, but I won`t have this chance for the next few years... Have you?

[tufta]

What's interesting Chopin is now said to die due to CF - cystic fibrosis (mucoviscidosis), even though throughout all those years we all assumed otherwise.

www.scrippsnews.com/node/22431

Chopin died on Oct. 17, 1849. Over 4,000 people attended his funeral services, when, by instructions in Chopin's will, Mozart's Requiem was performed. His body was interred in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

The death certificate mentioned tuberculosis, but an autopsy undertaken later by the eminent Parisian physician Dr. Jean Baptiste Cruveilhier declared that no tuberculosis was encountered in the lungs or elsewhere. He stated that in the lungs were pathologic changes that he had never previously seen.

What then caused Chopin's death? Some students of pulmonary disease have conjectured that Chopin was the victim of a heritable disease of altered mucous secretion, called mucoviscidosis, which impedes the absorption of oxygen in the lungs and encourages the growth of pneumonia-causing bacteria.

A further exploration of the medical conditions afflicting members of Chopin's immediate family reveals that his younger sister, Emilia, died of an undiagnosed lung disease before she turned 14 and his older sister, Ludovika, also died of an unspecified lung affliction when she was 47.

The more serious manifestation of this genetic disorder, affecting the lungs primarily, is now called cystic fibrosis. The disease and its genetic ramifications were not fully described until 1932, 83 years after the death of Frederic Chopin.

[gigi]

Jul 17, 2008 15:33:58 GMT 1 tufta said:

What's interesting Chopin is now said to die due to CF - cystic fibrosis (mucoviscidosis), even though throughout all those years we all assumed otherwise.

I did not know that Chopin's heart has been preserved. I just read that it is preserved in a crystal urn of what appears to be cognac and is at the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.

[gigi]

Here is one of my favorites:

It is a joyous piece, and oh how I envy the talent of the pianist! Just ignore the crabby/sleepy man behind him...

[Bonobo]

Jul 17, 2008 18:19:35 GMT 1 gigi said:

I did not know that Chopin's heart has been preserved. I just read that it is preserved in a crystal urn of what appears to be cognac and is at the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.

It`s interesting how people perceive certain things. Chopin`s heart was presumed to be the place where original music was born that is why the organ was preserved. Einstein was a scientist, so his brain was preserved.

[Bonobo]

Jul 17, 2008 15:33:58 GMT 1 tufta said:

What's interesting Chopin is now said to die due to CF - cystic fibrosis (mucoviscidosis), even though throughout all those years we all assumed otherwise.

www.scrippsnews.com/node/22431

Chopin died on Oct. 17, 1849. Over 4,000 people attended his funeral services, when, by instructions in Chopin's will, Mozart's Requiem was performed. His body was interred in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

The popular image is of Chopin as a frail consumptive - we should be given the chance to find out whether this is true

guardian.co. uk
July 30, 2008

Chopin

Romantic consumptive or someone with cystic fibrosis? Schick's portrait of Chopin. Photograph: Hulton Archive

Poor old Chopin. If it's not enough that he should be the consumptive emblem of a nation and its music, every detail of his life and his music fetishised into an icon of Polishness, he now faces the indignity of his remains being disinterred and made the forensic subject of scientific enquiry, nearly 160 years after his death.

It's all about his heart: after his death in Paris in 1849 (he left Warsaw in 1830, never to return, thanks to political and social upheaval), the composer's will stipulated that his heart should be returned to Warsaw. His sister, Ludwika, came back to Poland, with Chopin's most vital organ pickled in a jar of cognac. This ghoulish thingytail was buried in one of the pillars of the Holy Cross Church, in Warsaw's old town - the first on the left as you go in to the church's rather austere interior, in fact, and it's marked with a plaque, and a mandatory group of tourists having their photo taken; at least it was when I was there earlier this year.

The Polish government is refusing to allow this holy of holies of Polish music to be removed from its resting place (usually, to say of a composer that their heart is in their homeland would be no more than metaphorical whimsy; with Chopin, it's literally true). However, the scientists are trying to prove something genuinely important: this isn't the same as trying to find out if a lock of hair really was Beethoven's or Brahms's, or if some random 18th-century skull actually did house Mozart's grey matter. What they want to do is to take a sample of the heart to show that Chopin suffered from cystic fibrosis. His symptoms - his physical frailty, his difficulty breathing, and periods of exhaustion - have always been assumed to be down to tuberculosis. But if it was the genetically acquired cystic fibrosis instead, then we'd have to rethink the notion of Chopin dying from the Romantics' favourite disease, consumption. As the scientists say, 'Is it not right to make an attempt to prove to many suffering people that many things count in life much more than a weak physical body, and they are not predestined to vanish without leaving something that will influence, inspire and enrich generations to come?'

There's more. Virtually the entire reception history of Chopin, his music and his biography, is seen through the frame of his supposed physical weakness, whether it's the image of him as effete saloniste, or a performance practice that has stressed the lyrical intimacy of his works rather than their structural integrity. He was a complicated person, no doubt, as accounts of his tempestuous, decade-long affair with George Sand prove.

But his music, instead of merely reflecting his sickliness or the way he succumbed to his physical frailty, is heroic: not just in the way he created a whole new approach to playing and composing for the piano, but also because his creativity transcended the hardships of his life. If it was cystic fibrosis rather than TB, then that just makes Chopin's music the more astonishing. For sure, it won't change the musical significance of his output, but I think we ought to know: let the scientists have their sample, I say.

[Bonobo]

Arts, Briefly
Polish Pianist Protests United States Policies


Compiled by Dave Itzkoff
Published: April 27, 2009

The Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman surprised his audience during a recital on Sunday at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles when he announced that he would no longer perform in the United States in protest of the country’s military policies, the Web site of The Los Angeles Times, latimes.com, reported. Mr. Zimerman was about to play Karol Szymanowski’s “Variations on a Polish Folk Theme,” his final piece of the evening, when he told concertgoers that he would not continue to perform in a country whose military, he said, wants to take over the world. “Get your hands off my country,” Mr. Zimerman said, according to the report. In 2006 Mr. Zimerman halted a performance at Carnegie Hall when he believed he observed a concertgoer recording the recital. Amid heightened security after the 9/11 attacks, a Steinway grand piano that he traveled with was destroyed by the Transportation Security Administration, apparently because the piano’s glue resembled a compound used in explosives.





Pianist Zimerman says he won't return to US

Associated Press

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Polish piano virtuoso Krystian Zimerman, who had enthralled classical music fans on his most recent US tour, suddenly enraged many of them this week when he announced from the stage that he is so unhappy with the United States that he will not perform in the country again.

Zimerman's announcement came near the end of his performance Sunday night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the last stop on the musician's current US tour. A story posted on the Los Angeles Times' website yesterday said he blamed US foreign policy, but his manager, Mary Pat Buerkle, told The Associated Press his disenchantment with the country goes beyond that.

"He has talked for the last couple years about his touring in the States and of not coming back for a while," Buerkle said yesterday. "I think that there are many contributing factors to that decision, and I don't think it's appropriate to say it's all political."

Zimerman, one of the few pianists who brings his own Steinway with him on tour, has said security workers at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport destroyed one piano in recent years and ripped the keyboard out of another.

According to the Times, Zimerman was about to begin his final piece, Karol Szymanowski's "Variations on a Polish Folk Theme," when he turned to the audience and in a quiet but angry tone accused the United States of wanting to dominate the world.

"Get your hands off of my country," the Times quoted him, saying he also made reference to the US military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Several people walked out, although those who remained gave him a standing ovation at the end of his performance.

Buerkle said she didn't know when Zimerman might be willing to return. She declined to reveal specifically what he was unhappy about.

In a 2006 interview with Vermont's Barre Montpelier Times Argus, Zimerman said ramped-up border security has made it harder for him to bring his piano into the country.

"When people see a big black case, which smells of all kinds of chemicals, they go for it," he said.

In recent years he has taken to leaving a piano shell in the United States, carrying the instrument's innards with him and then assembling it here.

Zimerman, 52, has been described by allmusic.com as "one of the most sensitive and controversial concert pianists to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century."

He was still a teenager when he won the 1975 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and has won acclaim since for his interpretation of the works of Chopin, Beethoven and others.


Zimerman plays Chopin

[tufta]

Apr 28, 2009 21:08:21 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

Arts, Briefly
Polish Pianist Protests United States Policies


Compiled by Dave Itzkoff
Published: April 27, 2009

The Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman surprised his audience during a recital on Sunday at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles when he announced that he would no longer perform in the United States in protest

Did he go nuts? He is a genious pianist. What does it matter to the public what and why he might think?

[Bonobo]

Apr 29, 2009 17:19:15 GMT 1 tufta said:

Did he go nuts? He is a genious pianist. What does it matter to the public what and why he might think?

Probably. IMHO if an artist puts up an extravagant act like that, he feels his artistic career is coming to an end.

[Bonobo]

Why pianist Krystian Zimerman was right to speak out
The Polish pianist's anti-US tirade may have offended some, but it was relevant to the music he was playing. More power to his elbow

Tom Service
guardian.co. uk
4/28/09

Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman's political speech during his debut recital at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles shocked his Californian audience. He told the Americans to "Get your hands off my country", before he played Polish composer Karol Szymanowski' s Variations on a Polish Theme. But Zimerman has a track record with making political comment part of his concerts. Since 2003 and the war in Iraq, he has spoken out about the war when he was playing in any country that supported it: even, in Tokyo, giving a speech about international geo-politics in Japanese. This time, it's Obama's decision to continue the Bush policy of building a missile defence shield in Poland that has angered him – so much so that he said to the audience in Los Angeles that this would be his last appearance in America.

When I met Zimerman last year to interview him for Music Matters, I asked him if he really thought this kind of protest was the best way of making a point. His answer was that he couldn't in good conscience play to an audience in a country whose political leaders he disagreed with, without making some kind of stand. Zimerman isn't naïve enough to think that his way of speaking out is going to change US policy in Eastern Europe. But he feels his music making can only speak to listeners who understand where he's coming from.

It may have been clumsy – the Los Angeles Times's critic Mark Swed said that Zimerman's voice was "quiet but angry" and "did not project well" – but I admire Zimerman's convictions. Gumbel says that "classical musicians are not exactly famous for political ranting". I don't agree: from Paderewski, Poland's piano virtuoso prime minister, to Hanns Eisler, from Cornelius Cardew to Kurt Masur, countless classical composers and performers have been just as vocal and committed in their political beliefs as have any other musicians. It's probable Zimerman only made his speech because of the Polish music he was about to play. Playing Bach and Beethoven is one thing, but performing Szymanowski' s virtuosic Polish Variations for the exotic East-European delectation of a Los Angeles audience must have stuck in Zimerman's craw. Which is why he exploded, in his "quiet but angry" way.

The reaction of the audience, from cheering to walk-outs, showed that Zimerman touched a nerve, both in potentially offending his Californian hosts, and in breaking the invisible wall that often separates classical musicians from their audiences. I'm glad Zimerman isn't afraid to shatter that barrier, and to show that however cut off from the world a celebrity recital in a glitzy hall might seem to be, it's not. In Berkeley, an earlier leg of Zimerman's US tour, he asked the audience to appreciate how Bach's music could be heard as political: the Second Partita was composed in a minor key, perhaps, Zimerman said, because there was a leader that Bach didn't like. Zimerman ended the piece in C major, instead of the C minor that Bach writes, a sly indication that Zimerman approves of Obama more than Bush. But not enough, apparently, to play in America again. I hope, for the US, that he changes his mind (he's made the same promise about never playing in the States before, but then returned). Performers have every right to remind us of the political and social systems that connect us all, and to confront audiences with the difficult musical meanings that are latent in any concert programme. More power to your elbow, Krystian.











1975, he won the Chopin Competition


Zimerman was born in Zabrze, People's Republic of Poland, and studied at the Katowice Conservatory under Andrzej Jasiński. His career was launched when he won the 1975 Warsaw International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition. He performed with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1976 and he made his début in the United States with the New York Philharmonic in 1979. He has toured widely and made a number of recordings. Since 1996 he has taught piano at the Academy of Music in Basel, Switzerland.
Zimerman was born in Zabrze, People's Republic of Poland, and studied at the Katowice Conservatory under Andrzej Jasiński. His career was launched when he won the 1975 Warsaw International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition. He performed with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1976 and he made his début in the United States with the New York Philharmonic in 1979. He has toured widely and made a number of recordings. Since 1996 he has taught piano at the Academy of Music in Basel, Switzerland.

Zimerman is best known for his interpretations of Romantic music, but has performed a wide variety of classical pieces as well. He has also been a supporter of contemporary music. For example, Witold Lutosławski wrote his piano concerto for Zimerman, who later recorded it. Amongst his best-known recordings are the piano concerti of Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann with conductor Herbert von Karajan; the Brahms concerti with Leonard Bernstein, the piano concerti of Frédéric Chopin once conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and a later recording conducted by himself at the keyboard; the piano concerti of Beethoven under Bernstein; the first and second piano concerti of Rachmaninoff; the piano concerti of Franz Liszt with Seiji Ozawa, the piano concerti of Maurice Ravel with Pierre Boulez, and solo piano works by Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy and Franz Schubert. Recently, Zimerman recorded Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle (DG 477 5413; Limited Edition DG 477 6021).


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystian_Zimerman

[Bonobo]

Poles throw bicentennial bash for Chopin
TEXT SIZE Increase text size Decrease text size
By: VANESSA GERA
The Associated Press

The stirring strains of Frederic Chopin's music are reverberating across the world as music lovers celebrate the composer's 200th birthday this year _ from the chateau of his French lover to Egypt's pyramids and even into space.

But nowhere do celebrations carry the powerful sense of national feeling that they do in Poland, the land of his birth, where his heroic, tragic piano compositions are credited with capturing the essence of the country's soul.

Poland is going all out to display its best "product," as officials bluntly put it, staging bicentennial concerts and other events in and around Warsaw, the city where the composer _ known here as Fryderyk Chopin _ spent the first half of his life.

"Fryderyk Chopin is a Polish icon," said Andrzej Sulek, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. "In Polish culture there is no other figure who is as well-known in the world and who represents Polish culture so well."

Perhaps nothing better conveys Chopin's importance _ literally _ than his heart. It is preserved like a relic in an urn of alcohol in a Warsaw church, encased within a pillar with the Biblical inscription: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Just before his death at 39 from what was probably tuberculosis, a coughing and choking Chopin, fearful of being buried alive, asked that his heart be separated from his body and returned to his beloved homeland. His body is buried at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Chopin spent the second half of his life.

Finding it unseemly, Polish authorities have repeatedly rebuffed scientists wanting to run DNA tests on Chopin's heart to explore a suspicion that he actually succumbed to cystic fibrosis, a disease not yet discovered in his day.

Sulek said Poland might one day agree but would rather have the world focus on the genius's life, not his death, during this bicentennial year.

Chopin was born in 1810 at a country estate in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French emigre father. Historical sources suggest two possible dates of birth _ either Feb. 22, as noted in church records, or March 1, which was mentioned in letters between him and his mother and is considered the more probable date.

Since no one is sure, Poland is marking both. A series of concerts in Warsaw and Zelazowa Wola will take place over those eight days featuring such world-class musicians as Daniel Barenboim, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman.

Then, a refurbished museum opens in Warsaw on March 1 displaying Chopin's personal letters and musical manuscripts along with a multimedia narration of his life.

Celebrations span the globe, from music-loving Austria to concerts at Cairo's pyramids and across Asia, where his following is huge.

The astronauts who blasted into orbit on the Endeavor space shuttle Feb. 8 carried with them a CD of Chopin's music and a copy of a manuscript of his Prelude Opus 28, No. 7 _ gifts from the Polish government.

The Endeavor commander, George Zamka, who has Polish roots, told the Polish news agency PAP ahead of his trip to the International Space Station that listening to Chopin in space would enhance the majesty of the cosmos.

"Chopin is universal," said Mariusz Brymora, a Foreign Ministry official who helped put Chopin's music in space. "We are convinced that Chopin is Poland's best brand, Poland's best product. There is nothing else like him."

In France, Chopin is valued as "the composer who ushered in the age of great French music," according to Adam Zamoyski, historian and author of the new biography "Chopin: Prince of the Romantics."
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Chopin's entire musical output, about 15 hours worth all together, will be played by some 60 pianists at the end of February in the central French city of Chateauroux and in Paris in an event entitled "Happy Birthday Mr. Chopin." The program will be filmed and later shown on French television.

And the small chateau in Nohant of Chopin's famous companion for eight years, feminist writer Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin _ best known by her nom de plume George Sand _ has been fixed up and will host three weeks of concerts in June. Chopin wrote some of his masterpieces at that inspirational spot in central France.

Poland's parliament has formally declared 2010 to be the "Year of Chopin," and officials in Warsaw feel his Polishness must be stressed because many non-Poles still associate him primarily with France.

Chopin always had a strong Polish identity. He surrounded himself with Poles in France whenever he could and never felt fully comfortable with the French language.

The matter touches a nerve in Poland, which has more often than not been controlled by foreign powers over the past two centuries _ most recently during the decades of Moscow-imposed communist rule thrown off in 1989. Poles don't want to lose credit for Chopin, a genius whose universal appeal is even greater than that of Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa _ at least according to Brymora.

In Chopin's day, Poland was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria and did not exist as a state. In 1830, soon after Chopin embarked on a tour of Europe, an uprising broke out in Warsaw against its Russian rulers. It was put down with brutality, and a period of Russian repression followed that sent many other Polish artists into exile.

Chopin never returned mainly because it would have been "regarded as a betrayal of the others who were in exile," Zamoyski said. "Many of them couldn't return without facing prison _ or worse, death."

Poles hear in his music a deep nostalgia for his homeland, and stress the Polish elements in his oeuvre _ particularly in his Polonaises and Mazurkas, styles rooted in Polish folk music.

Halina Goldberg, author of "Music in Chopin's Warsaw," said that even before Chopin's death in 1849, Poles turned to his art to preserve a sense of their nationhood.

But others have also claimed him _ Germans have said his music falls into the tradition of German Romanticism; Russians call him a Slavic genius.

"There is always a question of how much Polishness is in his music," Goldberg, a music professor at Indiana University, said. "Much of it is in the ear of the beholder."

Certainly Nazi Germany, which occupied Poland during World War II, heard something subversive and banned it. The Nazis were clearly aware of what German composer Robert Schumann, also born in 1810, called Chopin's "cannons hidden beneath flowers."

"As Chopin was one of the rallying points of Polish identity, it was just one more thing that needed to be forbidden and destroyed," Zamoyski said.

After his death, Chopin was eulogized movingly by the Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid, who wrote that: "In the crystal of his own harmony he gathered the tears of the Polish people strewn over the fields, and placed them as the diamond of beauty in the diadem of humanity."

Now that Poland is again independent, it can savor that beauty without the tears.

[tufta]

Just amazing!




it was part of chopin2010.pl/en.html

[Bonobo]

Aug 31, 2010 8:43:17 GMT 1 tufta said:

Just amazing!
it was part of chopin2010.pl/en.html

I am sorry but I can`t listen to it for too long. It sounds like jazz too much.

[Bonobo]

Zebras turn into keyboards to celebrate Chopin Year
06.09.2010 17:18

Special Chopin road crossings are appearing in Warsaw to mark the 200th year of the birth of the great Polish composer.

The zebras crossings, which have taken on the irregular shape of a piano keyboard, can be seen in the city centre.

The aim of the new road markings is to remind tourists and Varsovians of Chopin Year, presently being celebrated in Poland.

Though the piano keyboard crossings do not play tunes, they should not fail to spark off imagination says Andrzej Laskowski from the Chopin 2010 office, responsible for the various events commemorating the composer’s bicentennial.

The music of Frederic Chopin has also inspired poster artists, which are now on display at the Regional City hall in Warsaw. Among the works presented are posters by such renowned Polishartists as Rafal Olbinski, Waldemar Swierzy or Andrzej Pagowski.

[Bonobo]

A newly discovered daguerrotype that purportedly shows Chopin on his deathbed has sparked a flurry of interest amongst fans of the composer.

The tattered picture was purchased by Wladyslaw Zuchowski, the owner of a photography gallery in Gdansk.

Zuchowski acquired the work from a Scottish collector, and he believes that the image may have come from the collection of Jane Stirling, a pupil of the pianist.

Stirling, the daughter of a Scottish aristocrat, was amongst Chopin most devoted admirers, although the composer was not entirely smitten with her country.

“The population is ugly, but apparently good-natured,” the composer wrote to a friend. Meanwhile, experts have been quick to cast doubts over the image.

Alicja Knast, curator of the Chopin Museum in Warsaw, says that there is no proof that the man represented in the picture is the great Polish composer, in spite of similarities.

Meanwhile, Malgorzata Grabczewska from the Polish Library in Paris says that signature on the image is dubious.

The daguerrotype is signed Louis Auguste Bisson, who photographed Chopin on another occasion. However, Grabczewska argues that Bisson never signed his works.

“There are no doubts that the work comes from the 19th century, but is it definitely a death bed scene photographed by Bisson?” she queried.

[Bonobo]

Priceless Chopin collection donated
25.03.2011 10:46
A priceless collection of Chopin memorabilia has been donated to the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw by Marek Keller, a Polish art dealer who left Warsaw in 1972 and has lived mostly in Mexico and France since.

The collection is comprised of forty seven items, the most important of which are the six letters written by the composer to his family in the years 1845-48.

According to the director of the Chopin Museum, Alicja Knast, they are an invaluable source of information about Chopin’s daily occupations and life style, including such things as his penchant for drinking chocolate, which he liked unflavoured.

At one stage the letters belonged to Maria and Laura Ciechomska, the granddaughters of one of Chopin’s sisters.

They were last exibited in 1939 and subsequently went missing. It was in 2003 that the Chopin Museum in Warsaw became aware of their existence. Marek Keller bought them from a collector who wished to remain anonymous.

His donation also includes letters from Jane Stirling, Chopin’s pupil in Scotland, written to the composer’s sister Ludwika after Chopin’s death, as well as the autograph manuscript of the Sonata in G minor for piano and cello, two drawings once belonging to Chopin and an invitation for a rehearsal concert of Berlioz’s Military Symphony on July 26, 1840.

The entire collection is on display in the Chopin Museum until 24 April.

Since 1999 Marek Keller has donated to the Chopin Museum in Warsaw a total of 35 of the composer’s letters purchased at various auctions.

[pjotr]

I love Chopin because of the ligthness of his music, the romanticism of it and because it always makes you to come into a pleasent mood due to it's musicality, quintessence and beauty.




I like Motzart, Beethoven and Bach too, but Chopins music has a special place in my heart and memory.

[pjotr]

Aug 31, 2010 15:16:26 GMT 1 Bonobo said:

Aug 31, 2010 8:43:17 GMT 1 tufta said:

Just amazing!
it was part of chopin2010.pl/en.html

I am sorry but I can`t listen to it for too long. It sounds like jazz too much.

I like old school Jazz, Polish jazz too, especially when it is played in a Krakow basement ;D

[tufta]

Pieter, I don't know if you've included Fantasie Impromptu cis-moll Op. 66 - by chance or by purpose. Imo Chopin's composition form several groups entitled 'best descibing....' There goes for instance: best decribing human autumn melancholy, or joy, or Polish countryside and so on. Impromptu cis-moll to me is among 'the best decribers'. It describes the best how the Polish mind works. At least my own

[pjotr]

Apr 3, 2011 21:43:47 GMT 1 tufta said:

Pieter, I don't know if you've included Fantasie Impromptu cis-moll Op. 66 - by chance or by purpose. Imo Chopin's composition form several groups entitled 'best descibing....' There goes for instance: best decribing human autumn melancholy, or joy, or Polish countryside and so on. Impromptu cis-moll to me is among 'the best decribers'. It describes the best how the Polish mind works. At least my own

I like very much this performance.

Tufta,

Than the Polish mind is an incedible sort of creative grandeur. Incurable, differant then other minds, but please keep that mindset.

Great minds, spirits and souls float above the average, if the Polish mind is like that then it is a high mountain amongst smaller ones. (The Sloval, Ukrainan, Baltic, Czech and German one). It's reaches the sky and the cultural universe. In the Polish mind and in Chopins music the East meets the West and the South meets the North, in the fact that European music and culture merges in his music. Poland, France, Germany, England, Scotland and Majorca.
The Poland he could never return to but which he had in his heart. Poland has a civilization many Poles don't know about. It is the immaterial civilization of music, culture, a language and a people with a tradition. I sense that when I listen to the music of the half Pole Chopin, but who was in fact 150% Polish, by his mothers blood, his heart and music.

This is simply a wonderful piece of music!

Pieter

[pjotr]

Apr 3, 2011 21:43:47 GMT 1 tufta said:

Pieter, I don't know if you've included Fantasie Impromptu cis-moll Op. 66 - by chance or by purpose.

Tufta,

I think it was intuitive, by chance, because I purely searched youtube for Chopin music I liked musically, and had to count on my hearing. But ofcourse I also tried to find something which fitted in with the first piece and the last piece. I liked the fluidness of the piece, like water in a waterfall or a wonderful river, the sound of the trees along it's shores and people having a polite conversation on the other side of the river. The piece breathes live, hapyness, luck and balance!

It's the vision of a free, beautiful and souvereign nation. That's what Poland is today and that's what Chopin wished for!

Pieter

[tufta]

Apr 3, 2011 23:45:12 GMT 1 pjotr said:

I liked the fluidness of the piece, like water in a waterfall or a wonderful river, the sound of the trees along it's shores and people having a polite conversation on the other side of the river.

Painter's vision Nice!

Also - the piece begins with agitated running around, then comes comforting and dreamlike middle part, but it's comfort is deceptive because it is like going in, and being lost in a an endless maze. To get out of the maze the music (and the mind) gets agitated again. Eventually the whole process ends in notes leaving the listener a little puzzled LOLOL

Apr 3, 2011 23:36:21 GMT 1 pjotr said:

[ the music of the half Pole Chopin, but who was in fact 150% Polish, by his mothers blood, his heart and music.

Hmm, Chopin lived in Poland's capital for the largest part of his life...

His father came from France to Poland when he was 16 years old and lived there for 57 years - mostly in Warsaw - until death. He took part in Kościuszko Uprising and was awarded the rank of lieutenant. He died in Warsaw and is buried in the Avenue of the Notables at Powązki Cemetery.

[pjotr]

Apr 4, 2011 4:38:37 GMT 1 tufta said:

Apr 3, 2011 23:45:12 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Apr 3, 2011 23:36:21 GMT 1 pjotr said:

[ the music of the half Pole Chopin, but who was in fact 150% Polish, by his mothers blood, his heart and music.

Hmm, Chopin lived in Poland's capital for the largest part of his life...

His father came from France to Poland when he was 16 years old and lived there for 57 years - mostly in Warsaw - until death. He took part in Kościuszko Uprising and was awarded the rank of lieutenant. He died in Warsaw and is buried in the Avenue of the Notables at Powązki Cemetery.

Tufta,

Ofcourse you are right, excuse me for my lack of knowledge, I think that Chopin knew two nations very well, Poland and France. Poland was his beginning, start, foundation and development and roots, France was his "exile", his grand finale.
He probably merged these two cultures into one, but was first of all a Pole in France and a Pole with a French (immigrant) father in Poland.

Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin lived in Poland the first very important 21 years of his life and after that 18 years in France. The years that Polish culture and Polish life determined him and Polish language and music shaped him, Chopin came from a musical family. Chopin's father played the flute and violin; his mother played the piano and gave lessons to boys in the elite boarding house that the Chopins maintained. As a result Frederic became conversant with music in its various forms at an early age.

He received his earliest piano lessons not from his mother but from his older sister Ludwika (in English, "Louise").

Chopin's first professional piano tutor, from 1816 to 1822, was the Czech Wojciech Żywny. Though the youngster's skills soon surpassed his teacher's, Chopin later spoke highly of Żywny. Seven-year-old "little Chopin" (Szopenek) began giving public concerts that soon prompted comparisons with Mozart as a child and with Beethoven.

Ofcourse he developped himself further in Poland in the next 13 years he lived there.

Source: Wikipedia English

In the English section of Wikipedia this is written about Frédéric Chopin, I quote:

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin (Polish: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 22 February or 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist, and music teacher, of French–Polish parentage. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music. He is also known as "the poet of the piano."

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there. Following the Russian suppression of the Polish November 1830 Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of the Polish Great Emigration. He supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few public performances. From 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French woman writer George Sand. For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39.

Most of Chopin's works involve the piano. They are technically demanding but emphasize nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented the musical form known as the instrumental ballade and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.

Chopins Polish identity

The Polish spirit, culture and language pervaded the Chopins' home, and as a result the son would never, even in Paris, perfectly master the French language. Louis Énault, a biographer, borrowed George Sand's phrase to describe Chopin as being "more Polish than Poland".

Abroad

Chopin arrived in Paris in late September 1831, still uncertain whether he would settle there for good. In fact he would never return to Poland, becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration.

[tufta]

Pieter, imo your knowledge is absolutely exemplary. Thanks for Andras Schiff movie link. He is great 'Chopenist' of course, and one of those who are easy to recognize even before they start to play!


Andras Schiff


Yulianna Avdeyeva


Janusz Olejniczak


Krystian Zimerman


Martha Argerich


Idil Biret


Fryderyk Chopin


Did you notice one common trait in their emploi?

(and no, seriously, I am not a follower of Lombroso!)


A very good article (introduction to a book), but only in Polish - if you, or anyone else, feels like reading through rusty automated translation - it will be worth the effort!

free.art.pl/podkowa.magazyn/nr60/pociej60.htm

[pjotr]

Apr 4, 2011 17:22:51 GMT 1 tufta said:

(and no, seriously, I am not a follower of Lombroso!)

Tufta,

When you know me well there is sometimes a thin line between seriousness and a tongue in the cheek in the ironical sense. In the Netherlands in spoken language I often have difficulties with my irony due to my Stoic being and pokerface. The irritating thing in that is that I often have to explain things and be less direct, because people do not understand me and become offended.

With good foreign people I communicate in English in spoken word or in correspondance, that is mostly less a problem. I have never considered you a follower of Lombroso, more as a follower of Darwin.

Pieter

[pjotr]

Apr 4, 2011 17:22:51 GMT 1 tufta said:

Did you notice one common trait in their emploi?

Large characteristic noses? ;D

P.S. - I like great noses if they fit in peoples faces!