The passing of Janusz Olejniczak (October 2nd 1952 - 20th October 2024) - One of the greatest national musical losses to Polish musical culture and the interpretation of Chopin
The musical nation of Poland is in deep shock this morning at the unexpected death of the great Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak. His death is a profound loss to Polish culture and a visionary interpretation of Chopin. A towering musician, idiomatic Chopinist and deep human being.
In 1970 he won the 6th prize in the International Chopin Competition. At 18 he was the youngest prize-winner in the competition. Garrick Ohlsson won that year, Mitsuko Uchida 2nd, Piotr Paleczny 3rd, Eugen Indjic 4th and Natalia Gavrilova 5th. An impressive line up to compete against as a teenager!
An absolutely iconic Chopin interpreter with true humanity possessing all the character qualities and complex nuances of the Polish artistic personality. His name was really only really well-known among the Polish Chopin cognoscenti who deeply understood Chopin's expressive intentions - this accessible yet mysteriously inaccessible composer. Not only the Chopin solo works for piano but also his chamber music, especially the Cello sonata. Olejniczak's brilliant technique in addition revealed his complete keyboard and musical penetration in glittering Ravel, rhythmically robust Shostakovich and emotive Prokofiev concertos in recordings with Sinfonia Varsovia under Jerzy Maksymiuk.
https://konkursy.nifc.pl/en/miedzynarodowy/juror/77/184_olejniczak_janusz
This rare, charming, warm-hearted man and gifted musician certainly inhabits the climat de Chopin and understands the potential of earlier instruments to give it dramatic and poetic voice. Certainly not all pianists trained on modern concert instruments have the sensitivity to transfer their digital dexterity and expression to the difficult single escapement mechanism of the Pleyel.
In Chopin the restraint of passion is far more powerful than the full expression of everything one has in mind. Chopin understood this principle to perfection. 'I only indicate. It is up to the listener to complete the picture.'
I had read books, correspondence and seen many films dealing with the highly creative romantic relationship between the great French writer and polemicist George Sand and the composer Fyrderyk Chopin at Nohant-Vic in the Berry region of central France. He wrote many of his immortal pieces there during the idyllic summer months. I felt I must make the effort to attend at least once, despite the rather complex journey from Warsaw. And Janusz Olejniczak was going to give a recital there !
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| George Sand was a keen horticulturalist as is evident in her garden at the west side of the house |
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The bust of Chopin outside the entrance to the Bergerie Courtyard, Nohant |
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Le maison de George Sand Nohant |
As a tribute to this great musician I would like to repost my review of a poetic concert he gave at the 2019 Nohant Festival. It was so hard to choose a review from the numerous performances of his I have attended and written about in Warsaw and Duszniki Zdroj.
Nohant Festival
Sunday 21st July 2019
14.30 Janusz Olejniczak
This afternoon Janusz generously played the following superbly accessible Chopin programme. Too many pianists forget the often limited musical experience of the majority of the audience and make excessive demands.
For me this was the finest recital of all the concerts I attended at this festival. Janusz Olejniczak at the top of his form! All of my observations above apply (he has learned to perfectly transfer his knowledge of the Pleyel or Erard to the Bechstein concert grand he played here). His range of refined sound and its quality were ravishing. I would like to add a few individual comments to pieces that particularly affected me.
Janusz engaged the audience in self-effacing, delightful and humourous banter during his recital which gave a warm and friendly intimacy and sense of improvised communication to the proceedings. 'What am I playing next?' was one question he asked us during the first half. 'I cannot remember!' with a finger to his temple and a despairing shake of the head. He speaks fluent French.
Programme
Fryderyk CHOPIN
Nocturne in C-sharp minor Op. posth.
Set the intimate, reflective, refined and nostalgic tone of the recital perfectly. Such a masterpiece and so moving with the luminous tone, perfect rubato and velvet touch of this pianist.
Nocturne in E minor Op. posth. 72 No 1
The melancholic cantilena was deeply moving in tone and sensitivity. Janusz had us in the palm of his hand as we were moved by the music rather than astonished - surely preferable in all of Chopin.
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| Pleyel pianino No. 15025 purchased by George Sand through the intermediary Pauline Viardot 25 May 1849 |
Polonaise in A major ('Military') Op. 40 No 1 (1839)
I have always been particularity fond of the polonaise as I learned it at the age of 12 sailing with my family on an Italian ship of the Lloyd Triestino line from Australia to Genoa in Italy in the mid 1960s. Chopin seems to have taken this Polonaise with him from Majorca to Paris. In 1837, Heinrich Heine spoke of Chopin: ‘Poland gave him a chivalrous soul and the suffering of its history’. The A major Polonaise might be said to express that ‘chivalrous soul’, and the C minor Polonaise the historical suffering of the Polish nation.
5 Mazurkas
The carefully chosen mazurkas were simply divine....nothing left to say. His rubato is so marvellously idiomatic...
Scherzo No 2 in B-flat minor Op. 31 (1835-37)
A tremendously dramatic, brilliantly passionate, intense yet lyrical reading of irresistible forward momentum, rather like a Ballade.
Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski writes of this scherzo: 'The new style, all Chopin’s own, which might be called a specifically Chopinian dynamic romanticism, not only revealed itself, but established itself. It manifested itself à la Janus, with two faces: the deep-felt lyricism of the Nocturnes Op.27 and the concentrated drama of the Scherzo in B flat minor.'
Arthur Hedley thought about the work’s ecstatic lyricism, before concluding in a way even more appropriate today in the age of recording: ‘Excessive performance may have dimmed the brightness of this work, but should not blind us to its merits as thrilling and convincing music.’
Interval
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| The Dining Room at Nohant |
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| The place setting for Fryderyk Chopin |
Nocturne in C minor no. 1, Op. 48 No 1 (1841)
This Nocturne was composed at Nohant in the summer of 1841. Olejniczak adopted a tempo of what one might call mournful, majestic despair that permeates this piece. The great bass notes in the first section fell like statements of paradise lost, the central section a nostalgic and yearning chorale leading into the passionate utterance and agitation of the final section with an almost abnegation of life and final resignation to fate. His rubato is organically generated from within his heart, replete with refinement, instinctive taste and idiomatic understanding of le climat de Chopin.
3 waltzes
Ballade No 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1831 or 1834/5)
A magnificent reading of this tumultuous work. The atmosphere, character and style of the G minor Ballade position it so closely to the B minor Scherzo above the choice was inspired I felt. One of the finest accounts I had ever heard.
A profound essay on the gestation and significance of this Ballade by Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski can be found here:
A profound essay on the gestation and significance of this Ballade by Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski can be found here:
2 waltzes
So few pianists have any idea how to play a Chopin waltz with period feel and more importantly early nineteenth century sensibility in 2019. Here we had divine understanding of the Chopin waltz...enough said.
Polonaise No. 6 in A flat major ('Heroic') Op. 53 (1842)
Composed at Nohant in the summer of 1842.
This was an imperious, majestic and dramatic account by Olejniczak, not unlike a Ballade in this interpretation. It contained in the words of Hugo Leichtentritt, a German musicologist and composer ‘everything that the polonaise contains in terms of sparkle, distinction, strength and enthusiasm was expressed in this masterpiece in the most exhilarating way possible’.
His approach also justified the view of the modern Polish musicologist, music critic and composer Jan Zdzisław Jachimecki who considered it ‘the most perfect work in the history of the genre’.
The Scale of Love (1717-1718) - Jean-Antoine Watteau (National Gallery, London)
Janusz then turned to us mentioning in soft and charming French how Nohant was the domain of love between Chopin and the great French writer George Sand. His appropriate encore would be Le Rossignol en Amour (The Nightingale in Love) from Pièces de clavecin Book III of Francois Couperin. Thus did he open another window on an area of musical exploration I have often examined on the harpsichord with intense pleasure, the surprisingly close poetic relationship between the music of Francois Couperin and Fryderyk Chopin.
Wanda Landowska in her book Musique ancienne (1909, p. 213) writes of Chopin 'le Couperin du dix-neuvième siecle' ou encore in 'Interpretation de Chopin' 'ce Couperin teinté de romantisme' . This aspect of Chopin is examined in detail in a fascinating essay by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger entitled Chopin et Couperin : affinités sélectives [Buchet/Chastel Société Française de Musicologie 1997 p. 175-193]
Yves Henry wittily refers to Janusz Olejniczak as 'Le papa de Chopin'.....
Wanda Landowska in her book Musique ancienne (1909, p. 213) writes of Chopin 'le Couperin du dix-neuvième siecle' ou encore in 'Interpretation de Chopin' 'ce Couperin teinté de romantisme' . This aspect of Chopin is examined in detail in a fascinating essay by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger entitled Chopin et Couperin : affinités sélectives [Buchet/Chastel Société Française de Musicologie 1997 p. 175-193]
Yves Henry wittily refers to Janusz Olejniczak as 'Le papa de Chopin'.....
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| Chopin's Room (inhabited from 1839-1846) Actually only half of it with only the soundproofed original entrance doors remaining. After his departure Sand divided it into two, the other half becoming a domestic library |
Here is a link to a brief YouTube memory of Janusz Olejniczak at Nohant with (if you read French) notification of his death, spiritual closeness to Nohant and an announcement of a celebration of his art that will take place at the 2025 Nohant Festival.
If you would like to further your understanding of the sound world inhabited by Chopin himself (if not vital the historical context) I suggest listening to two contrasting pieces (the Mazurka in B flat minor Op. 24 No. 4 and the so-called 'Revolutionary' Etude Op. 10, No. 12 in C minor) via this link below. They are performed on an 1831 Pleyel in this now rare recording by perhaps the most poetic and soulful of the Polish pianists - Janusz Olejniczak
Download free at:
I feel Janusz has retained the essentially Polish melancholy of this composer. The Etude erupts from the instrument with a potent anger sweeping all before it while the mazurka is a miracle of intimacy, poetry and tone colour. None of these sound qualities are any longer possible on modern instruments, however great the player. Even brilliant musicians can only resort to inspired approximations and brilliant over-pedalled fudges. It is the very limitations of the period instrument that adds so much to the subtle feminine intimacy and sudden contrast of flaring of masculine anger so characteristic of the complex personality of this composer.
The completely physical and percussive treatment of the instrument in Chopin interpretation today is beginning to depress me inordinately. Many young pianists possess such fabulous technique that has required enormous work and personal sacrifice to achieve. Why waste it thundering away? Is Chopin's music only to be offered up on the altar of egotistical virtuosic display, competition career building and monetary gain? 'Technique is money' a noted Asian musical academician and pianist once observed to me rather perceptively at a Masterclass.
There is no relation between Chopin's fastidious personality and the deformed augmentation of his masculine side at the expense of the feminine side of his nature, a man who abhorred 'the exhalation of the crowd'.
If you wish to purchase two superb earlier recordings expressing refined gender balance by Janusz Olejniczak, I can recommend from the National Chopin Institute that cover a range of Chopin genres on period Erard or Pleyel made in 2007 and 2008 :
also
The Larghetto is divinely romantic in colour, sensitivity of tone and aristocratic sensibility. This and the style brillante of the Rondo creatres a fabulous recording of the F-minor concerto with Frans Brüggen
conducting the Orchestra of the 18th Century
conducting the Orchestra of the 18th Century
From many other recordings he made during a rich lifetime - some 40 I believe - do look at:
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