CHOPIN ALLAN MARTIN

Allan Martin, born 1954 in San Francisco, grew up in Oregon. He studied piano and composition with the Czech composer Tomas Svoboda in Portland, Oregon, with Claire James, Robert Sheldon and John Adams at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and with Colin Horsley and Edwin Roxburgh in London, and has concertized and taught piano near Stuttgart, Germany for over thirty years. He specializes in playing historical pianos from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. A previous CD of his, Everything is Ragtime Now, recorded with the Oregon ensemble De Organographia, appeared on the Pandourion label.

Anyone reading the letters of Fryderyk Chopin for the first time will, I think, be surprised at how unromantic they are. Chopin’s style is clear, direct, with a sense for social satire of the sort to be found in the works of Jane Austen, marked by occasional blackly humorous barbs against himself. And it is notable – for all that we find out about the man’s daily life at any given time, his praise for opera productions for example, or preference for certain singers – how very little we find out about what made this reserved, cultivated Pole produce the sort of music that he did: music which even his admirer Robert Schumann sometimes found too chromatic, too drastic. “In the country of his birth and its fate lies the explanation both of his merits and his faults,” wrote Schumann. “Who will not be reminded of him when we use the words Visionary, Grace, Presence of Mind, Ardour, and Aristocracy, but who as well when we use the words Strangeness, Morbid Eccentricity, even Animosity and Wildness?”

We know of Chopin’s childhood in and around Warsaw, of his first teacher Wojciech Żywny, who instilled in him a lifelong love of the music of J. S. Bach; and of the iron grip of Russia on his Polish homeland, which led him to spend the balance of his adult life in France, with Paris as its center. We know that he spoke excellent French, but with a marked accent; that he moved at ease within the aristocracy but sought out Polish exiles in particular; that he considered himself first and foremost a composer, playing frequently in private salons but more rarely and reluctantly in public. The fact that he made much of his income teaching piano to the – predominantly but not exclusively female - offspring of the wealthy, is reflected by the dedications of his published music. According to Franz Liszt, Chopin was once asked “by what name he called the strange emotion inclosed in his compositions, like ashes of the unknown dead in sculptured urns of the purest alabaster.” Chopin replied with the Polish Żal. “As if his ear thirsted for the sound of this word, which expresses the whole range of emotions produced by an intense regret, through all the shades of feeling, from hate to repentance, he repeated it again and again.”

We know of the women in Chopin’s life, of the young singer Konstancja Gładkowska, and of his secret engagement to Maria Wodzińska, broken off by her parents. We can trace the history of his eight-year relationship with Aurore Dudevant, alias George Sand, their first cold, rainy months on Majorca, the summers spent at Sand’s Chateau Nohant that gave the composer the peace and security to write his greatest works, the slow drift apart, then, seriously ill by this time, his travels in England and Scotland at the behest of his student Jane Stirling.

And finally we have to marvel that this man, who spent much of his fortune on the countless doctors attending his extended chronic illness, who often in his last years had to be carried up and down stairs by his servant, was able to cling so long and so tenaciously to life before he finally succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 39.

Chopin’s deeply felt emotional life was buried under a surface of aristocratic reserve. After his death Maria Wodzinska’s letters to him were found bound up in an envelope marked tersely “Moja bieda” (My misery). As a composer, inspired notably by the works of his beloved Bach, he moved far away from the glittering brilliant style popular in his youth, revolutionizing piano technique in a manner that has not been done since and leaving us a body of works that in its poetic power and intimacy remains unequalled.

Robert Schumann on Chopin “For if the great monarch of the north [the Russian tsar] knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin’s works, in the simple melodies of his Mazurkas, he would forbid the music. Chopin’s works are cannons embedded in flowers.”

“[…] especially the three waltzes [op. 34] must please us, quite different as they are from others of their kind, and as only Chopin can imagine them when he elevates the dancing multitude with his playing, and in the profundity of his vision sees other things there than what is merely being danced. There is such animated life to them that they really seem to have been improvised in the ballroom.”

“We spoke much […] about the real character of the Polonaise […] and that the last bar of the polonaise with its descending figure had an element of sadness for me […] ‘Since Warsaw was captured,’ said my dancing partner, ‘I am always afraid, when I dance a Polonaise, that a Cossack will come in with an edict – the poor Poles!’ […]”

track samples - 60 sec.

*Mazurkas op. 63* (1846) 1. *Vivace B major*
2. *II Lento F minor*
3. *Allegretto C sharp minor*
*Nocturnes op. 32* (1836/37) 4. *Andante sostenuto B major*
5. *Lento A flat major*
*Etude op. 10 No. 5 G flat major* (1830)
6. *Vivace*
*Polonaises op. 26* (1834/35) 7. *Allegro appassionato C sharp minor*
8. *Maestoso E flat minor*
9. *Vivace A-flat major*
10. *Lento A minor*
11. *Vivace F major*
*Nocturne op. 62 No. 2 E major* (1834/35) 12. *Lento*
*Ballade No. 3 op. 47 A-flat major* (1841) 13. *Allegretto*

Pleyel grand piano built in 1849, restored by Stefan Schneider, recorded in Stuttgart, Germany in November 2009 and February 2010 in the workshop of Stefan Schneider.

piano image

About the piano The composer Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, born near Vienna in 1757, founded in 1807 one of the most famous and important piano manufacturing companies in France. Pleyel’s son Camille became a business partner in 1815, and in the 1820s – working closely with famous artists of the time – took the leading role in the successful direction of the company. The production rooms in Paris had to be enlarged repeatedly. In 1830 the Salle Pleyel opened its doors.

Fryderyk Chopin met Camille Pleyel after his arrival in Paris in the autumn of 1831. In February 1832 he played the first of a number of concerts in the Salle Pleyel, and remained a friend of the firm until his death. Friedrich Niecks cited Franz Liszt as saying: “As long as Chopin, as in his first years in Paris, was healthy and strong, he usually played the pianos of Erard: But after his friend Camille Pleyel presented him with one of his wonderful instruments, with their metallic sound and light action, he no longer wished to play other makes of pianos […] He loved the Pleyel pianos especially for their silvery bright, somewhat veiled sound and their light touch.”

The piano, built in 1849, has a simple English action. There are only three parts: (1) The key, (2) the jack at the end of the key and (3) the hammer, which is propelled upwards to the strings by the jack.

The instrument is triple strung (three strings per tone) with strings of soft iron. The bass is double strung (two strings per tone) and the strings are wound with brass.

The tractive force of the strings is taken up by a wooden frame reinforced by four iron struts. The range is 6 ½ octaves. The instrument is 2.15 meters long and finished in mahogany.

The tuning pitch is A=435 Hz, which became official in Paris in 1858. However, since Pleyel delivered pianos to countries where the official pitch was often substantially higher the strings are, interestingly, gauged in such a way that one can tune to these higher pitches too without a problem.

Stefan Schneider

CHOPIN ~ ALLAN MARTIN