Warsaw hosts the Pearls of the Chopin Period Piano Competition 5th - 15th October 2023
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| The last Pleyel (No. 14810) piano played by Fryderyk Chopin Fryderyk Chopin Museum, Warsaw |
A Different
Virtuosity
Pearls of the Period
Piano in Warsaw
The mystery of
instrumental sound and performance before recording has become an irresistible
lure in classical music. Even before 1800 musicians were becoming increasingly
interested in the nature of 'ancient music' if not so much in the manner in
which it was performed. Baron Gottfried van Swieten contributed to Mozart's
love of Handel and Bach in Vienna.
Interest increased over
the intervening years with the evolution of the humanist scholarly discipline
of 'musicology'. Through the exciting explorations during the 1970s up to the
present day, the so-called 'Early Music' movement and its now mainstream credibility
has expanded exponentially in scope. This movement has become firmly
established in Europe on the period piano, notably in Warsaw.
Inevitably
musicological interest and concern with authentic instrumentation has begun to
focus on the extensive Romantic piano repertoire and the wide variety of pianos
on which such works were performed. The ground-breaking and fascinating 1st
International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in Warsaw in
September 2018, was the first such competition in the world. The 2nd International
Chopin Competition on Period Instruments will take place in Warsaw
from 5-15 October 2023.
http://www.michael-moran.com/2023/10/the-2nd-international-chopin.html
The National
Fryderyk Chopin Institute had in 2005 already pioneered a series collection
of award-winning recordings made on their collection of period pianos by
world-famous pianists including Fou Ts'ong, Martha Argerich, Maria Joao Pires,
Nelson Goerner, Tatiana Shebanova, Dang Thai Son and Dina Yoffe. This valuable
recording initiative, known as The Real Chopin, continues to
expand.
In an historical
context, restoring the authentic sound of music by Fryderyk Chopin and the
composers contemporary with him is particularly challenging. Approximating the
original color and mechanics of the instruments the composer had at his
disposal may, with study and practice, assist us to grasp the unique, specific
character of Chopin’s music and open another parameter of interpretation
dislocated as we now are from the historical source.
The period piano
collection of The National Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw contains among
others Erards from 1838,
1849 and 1858; Pleyels from 1830, 1848 (Chopin's last piano) and
1854; a Broadwood from 1843; Paul McNulty copies of an
1819 Graf and an 1825 Buchholtz
with a slightly extended compass and extra moderator pedal.
When one first
encounters a nineteenth-century piano, the difference in sound to a modern
concert grand can be rather striking to the uninitiated ear. 'I say, that's
rather like the out of tune piano of my elderly aunt!' someone commented to
me who had never before heard a wooden-framed piano. However the ear soon
becomes accustomed to the contrast and then slowly becomes aware of the unique
riches encountered on this journey aboard such a time machine.
A wealth of unfamiliar,
fascinating music contemporaneously composed for these pianos is being
uncovered in ancient libraries and dusty caverns throughout Poland. These instruments
give us an unprecedented opportunity to analyze the sound of say, early
unfamiliar style brillante works by Chopin. I have always
believed his youthful polonaises have been unjustly neglected and underrated.
A modern concert hall
can never be as conducive to elegant intimacy and poetic reverie as a serious nineteenth
century ‘salon’ might have been, seasoned with intellectual conversation, an
aristocratic audience, family portraits, paintings, Caucasian rugs, French
tapestries and Murano chandeliers.
In the early to
mid-nineteenth century, piano sound and national character were intimately
connected. The national cultural preferences in musical style,
instrumental sound, timbre even the politics of music were significant in
a way they are far less today. With the passing years the design and
sound of our modern instruments have become homogenized with scarcely any national
predilections or any significant technical advances. Makers of the more recent
past such as Blüthner, Baldwin, C.Bechstein, Grotrian-Steinweg,
Petrof or even Pleyel are rarely heard on concert
platforms.
For most audiences,
their first acquaintance with the music of Chopin is through the medium of a
modern instrument and almost never through an historical
instrument of his time. Ill-informed opinions of his
music can easily be formed on an instrument he would never have contemplated in
size or listened to at a volume that would have certainly disconcerted him.
He once commented in
relation to his Preludes: ‘I indicate, the listeners must complete the
picture.’ Chopin with his
characteristic barbed irony once confided to Liszt, who was really the
originator of the public performance as we know it:
I am not suited to
public appearances – the auditorium saps my courage, I suffocate in the
exhalation of the crowd, I am paralyzed by curious glances . . . but you,
you can, since if you should fail to win over the audience you at least have
the possibility of murdering them.
He could never have
envisaged modern recordings in a world lacking electricity. The Chopin
aesthetic is essentially that of the sensibility of the eighteenth century
poised on the cusp of the Romantic period. He once declared:
‘Concerts are never
real music; you have to give up the idea of hearing in them the most beautiful
things of art.’
However during the nineteenth century there was a ferment of national activity
in Europe fast pushing forward piano design with an astonishing range of
inventive devices. From the simple action of the Cristofori instrument
of 1720 with its papier-mâché cylinder hammers covered in thin
leather to the sophisticated instrument of today is
a long journey of invention. These exciting advances were intimately linked
with what composers required to satisfy their exploratory musical imaginations.
There is a courageous, even avant-garde emotion in feeling
that a composer is pushing the limits of his instrument. This is affectingly
clear in Beethoven on pianos of his day so full of creative tension, inadequate
to fully realize the turbulent sound world of his imagination.
The modern steel-framed concert grand began to develop under
similar creative pressure from the formidable keyboard demands of Liszt,
Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Scharwenka, Rubinstein and others. One
is forced to ask if these are unarguably the most suitable
instruments for the sound world of earlier repertoires and the instruments
available to composers then? Chopin's early style brillante works
are masterpieces but influenced by Hummel and the earlier late
eighteenth century soundscape of Viennese instruments rather more than the
different later French and English developments of Pleyel, Erard and Broadwood.
The volume and timbre of the English 1848 Broadwood ('le
rosbif') with its felt-covered hammers and double escapement mechanism, is
surprisingly different to the more restrained Viennese character produced by
the lighter, leather-covered hammers and single escapement of say the Paul
McNulty copy of the 1819 Graf or the unique sound of the Polish1825 Buchholtz.
The masculine strength and full-blooded English character of the Broadwood was
admired by Chopin and influenced the piano design and compositions of Camille
Pleyel.
The sensual, refined
and elegant French character of a period Pleyel is another significant national contrast.
The sound world and emotional connotations produced in the heart and mind are
substantially different and more subtle to those evoked by modern instruments.
Being entirely hand built to commission meant each instrument was different. The
Pleyel has a magisterial rhapsodic bass, luminous but warm cantabile and feather
light ethereal pianissimos uniquely achievable in the treble. In
chromatic Etudes ranging over the entire compass of the keyboard, the register
colours are gloriously displayed in a rainbow arc of sound.
On the Polish Buchholtz the moderator (a
rail of thin felt placed between the hammers and the strings) can be utilized emotionally
to create a sound world of tender intimacy, of luminous yet veiled light. The
dream or rather nostalgic ache contained within the Michał Kleofas
Ogiński Polonaise 'Farewell to My Homeland (Pożegnanie
Ojczyzny),' of 1794 is heightened
with the double moderator. The ultra-pianissimo
is yearning and deeply melancholic in its sense of loss. One
feels spiritually transported in a way rarely experienced.
On a period piano the musical narrative is
coherent and unfolds like the wings of a moth preparing to fly at dusk. So much
polyphonic detail and transparent nuance is organically revealed in Bach,
Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn or Chopin on earlier instruments, an expressiveness
that grows organically from within not merely applied to the surface.
Important observations crystallize in my mind. Tone and
touch, the quality of the sound produced, are little spoken of today in
appraising a pianist. We are more concerned with structural, interpretative, historical
and biographical concerns.
On period instruments
the player must work at producing an alluring tone. Much
depends on ‘singing’ with a subtle, sophisticated cantabile finger
technique with little use of arm or body weight. Tempting ‘hysterics’ in
performance are severely punished on period pianos. However, the
preoccupation with cantabile playing gradually fell from
favour as the nature and style of composition changed and piano design
concentrated more on percussive volume to satisfy the thousands of listeners in
the cavernous space of the modern concert hall.
Chopin spoke
obsessively in his teaching of the primary importance of cultivating a
beautiful tone and touch. ‘Caress the key, never bash it!’ he
would say. ‘Simplicity is everything.’
On a Pleyel the pedals alter the timbre, inseparable from tone
production. Pedalling became in his words, ‘a study for life’. His
uniquely creative use of the pedal in his rare recitals was often commented
upon.
Antoine François
Marmontel (1816–1898), a renowned French pianist, composer, teacher and
musicographer, observed of Chopin's playing:
‘I heard Chopin during
his first year in Paris, and his playing already had an exquisite beauty, a
natural sensitivity, a suave, hazy sonority based essentially on the delicacy
of his touch and his quite individual use of the pedals.’
In more modern times
the great pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus wrote in The Art of Piano
Playing in the extensive chapter ‘On Tone’ :
‘Music is a tonal art.
It produces no visual image, it does not speak with words or ideas. It speaks
only with sounds. But it speaks just as clearly and intelligibly as do words, ideas
or visual images.’
The production of a
fine tone, an individual voice, perhaps more especially on a period instrument, depends
both on the ear and the spiritual qualities of the performer. Tone is not
sensuously static but a dialectic rendering musical meaning. The
variation of tonal texture is analogous to colour gradations in painting.
Period instruments lend themselves perfectly to a multi-layered, ‘multi-plane’
painterly approach. This is an important consideration, polyphony being
omnipresent in many works by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and
Chopin.
Music that sounds
homogenous on a modern piano can reveal distinct voices on a period instrument,
each voice with its own individual character and kaleidoscope of register
colours. Certain rarefied and refined feelings in Chopin simply cannot be
captured on a modern instrument. One learns a great deal about familiar works
played on instruments of the period that can often be transferred with
modifications to augment the ubiquitous Steinway's own
unique qualities.
Chopin
wrote: ‘Fortepiany Pleyelowskie est non plus ultra’ - the instrument is
the last word in perfection. The tone of a Pleyel has a seductive velvet
quality to it, slightly diffuse, with light transparent trebles and a rich but
clear mahogany bass. Liszt wrote of ‘their silvery and slightly veiled
sonority’ and ‘lightness of touch’. The puzzling descriptions of
Chopin’s playing, his refined nuances,
inimitable rubato, cantabile melodic line and delicate ornamentation ‘falling
like tiny drops of speckled dew over the
melodic figure’ according to Liszt, make absolute sense with the light
action and extreme sensitivity of a period Pleyel.
Chopin was to write from Paris to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski:
‘When I feel out of sorts,’ Chopin would say, ‘I play on an
Erard piano where I can easily find a ready-made tone. When I feel
in good form and strong enough to find my own individual sound,
then I need a Pleyel piano.'
A more balanced bass is
achievable on these straight strung period pianos assuming your heart is
engaged in expressiveness rather than display. A legato ‘singing tone’ and
detached ‘hammer tone’ are both brilliantly achievable. Heinrich Neuhaus
concludes his chapter on tone with these eloquent words:
‘…tone must be clothed
in silence; it must be enshrined in silence like a jewel in a velvet case.’
The many alternative pianos with their great
variety of timbre and sound palette would have constantly stimulated Chopin's
imagination.
The essential nature of
the eighteenth century style brillante, of which
the Grand Polonaise Brillante Op.22 is an outstanding
representative of Chopin’s early Varsovian style, seems rather a mystery to many
young pianists. Jan Kleczyński writes of this work: ‘There is no composition
stamped with greater elegance, freedom and freshness’.
The period style
brillante involves virtuoso display, intense feeling, a bright light touch
and glistening tone, varied shimmering colours, supreme clarity of
articulation, what was referred to in French as the renowned jeu perlé. The
expressive elements of personal charm, grace, taste and elegance should also be
in abundance. The style is perfect for the early period pianos for which it was
conceived.
Expressive and decorative fiorituras, controlled
pianissimos of which there are many in Chopin, can be
produced with breathtaking delicacy on a period instrument, like cobwebs dusted
with dew. The limited dynamic scale and scope of emotion implied in the direction con
forza or appassionato remain in balance in
Chopin on a period instrument.
Hyperbole was popular in describing Chopin’s
playing. However, there must be some elements of truth in these baroque
descriptions. Yet few contemporary reviews mention his piano by name as connected
with his actual playing. One remarkably perceptive and descriptive account of a
Chopin concert with Pauline Viardot and Franchomme at the Pleyel salon in Rue
Cadet on 21 February 1842 was written by Léon Escudier and published in La
France musicale :
‘A poet, a tender poet above all, Chopin makes
poetry predominate. […] M. Pleyel’s magnificent instruments lend themselves
admirably to these various shadings. Listening to all these sounds, all these
nuances – which follow each other, intermingle, separate and reunite to arrive
at the same goal, melody – one might well believe one is hearing small fairy
voices sighing under silver bells, or a rain of pearls falling on crystal
tables. […]
Do not ask Chopin to simulate grand orchestral effects on the piano. This type of playing suits neither his constitution nor his ideas. He wishes rather to astonish you with his light swiftness, with mazurkes [sic] with their novel forms and not give you nervous attacks and make you swoon. His inspiration is all of tender and naïve poetry; do not ask him for big gestures or diabolic variations; he wishes to speak to the heart, not to the eyes; he wishes to love you not to devour you. See how the public is in ecstasy...’
Few participants in the extraordinary 1st International Chopin Competition on
Period Instruments in Warsaw seemed to be familiar with such
contemporaneous accounts or simply ignore them in obedience to their performance careers. In the end
it is personal character that will distinguish one pianist
from another at the highest level of performance and interpretation. A
different virtuosity and musical character is required for convincing
performance on the period piano. The cultivation of it requires a special sensibility,
historical imagination, acute ear, and love.
Each historical epoch interprets the past
through its own cultural filters. Consideration of contemporaneous accounts and
the instruments on which the music was originally performed is a vital addition
to any performance of music wishing to approach the musical source with
integrity.
There is a present intense reassessment of the soundscape of Chopin, Schubert,
Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann and many 'forgotten' composers during the remarkable renaissance of Polish
music now taking place.
I feel a similar excitement to that experienced
in London during the revolution in Baroque and ‘Early Music’ historical performance
on the harpsichord in the late 1960s and 1970s. A similar revolution seems to
me to be now in progress with the period piano. The evidence lies in Warsaw,
perhaps the greatest European centre of this radical rethinking in 2023. The complex echoes of this renaissance in interpretation or 'rehearing',
(a concept coined by the Chopin authority Prof. John Rink), have begun in
earnest.
The greatest achievements in art should make one question accepted values and perceptions, enable
one to see or hear familiar things differently, reveal new previously hidden
joys through another pair of uniquely gifted eyes or ears. This was
certainly accomplished during the 1st. International Chopin Competition
on Period Instruments in Warsaw. Hopefully this will be mirrored
during the second competition in October.
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