The New Neo

My favorite classical composers are as follows: Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Dvorak. Note the order; Chopin leads the way. Is that because I was heavily exposed to Chopin from the age of four in ballet class? I don’t think it’s just that. I think it’s because Chopin’s music is totally unique and exceptionally beautiful.

Many long years ago I bought one of those huge record sets that had all his works. I listened to all of the piano pieces over and over and became at least somewhat familiar with every one.

I don’t play piano, or really any other instrument. But – like so many people – I took piano lessons as a child and quit very early, maybe after John Thompson book number two.

But much later I was in law school and living in a rented house with four other women. This house had an old upright piano in the living room. One day after listening to one of my Chopin records I decided I was going to learn how to play one piece by Chopin. I bought the sheet music to a whole book of Chopin’s waltzes, opened it up, and chose one. It took many months of laboriously working it out (I read music very very slowly) and adding on little bits every day, but at some point I mastered that thing.

Well, “mastered” isn’t the correct word. But I could play it from start to finish, and I could fool people into thinking that I therefore knew how to play the piano with some vague competence. But when they asked me to play something else I had to explain there was nothing else I could perform except a few excerpts from “Teaching Little Fingers to Play,” which I’d encountered at about the age of six, and which sounded like it.

So I learned one additional piece, this time an easier one by Bach.

Later I tried Janacek – and was defeated. That was when I lived in my own house with my own family – husband and young son who briefly took piano lessons as well – and had my own ancient and not-very-good upright piano.

That was a long time ago, as well. Now I’ve lived without a piano for over twenty years and can’t play any of these pieces.

Here is the Chopin I decided to learn and did learn. I chose it because I liked it, it’s relatively easy (for Chopin), and (best of all) it’s in the key of C. Well, that is, it starts in the key of C, and then it has some lovely key changes later on. I could play that waltz by heart – which was fortunate, since I can only read music at geologic speed. Once I had memorized it, it was all in the body memory, and I could pay attention to making it sound sort of good:

10:36 15:50

I don’t even remember which Bach piece I learned, but here’s the Janacek that defeated me:

And now let’s come to the Chopin polonaise that is, after all, the subject of this post. Here’s a modern-day pianist named Lang Lang with what is known as Chopin’s “Heroic” polonaise:

He’s good, but whatever he’s doing doesn’t get to me. It seems to be a surface kind of playing compared to the old school – the school that some call too emotional and histrionic but that I much prefer. Here Rubinstein seems to me to be so beautiful and smooth and graceful, and expresses whatever the music is saying and meaning so much more satisfyingly:

And here Horowitz is so dramatic – with pianissimos so soft and fortissimos so loud. And yet he also retains what I see as the essence of the music. Apparently there are some wrong notes in this performance; I certainly don’t hear them, nor do I care one whit:

There’s an awful lot written about both Rubinstein and Horowitz and even about the two versus each other. On Horowitz:

Even more important than popular acclaim, in a way, was the enormous respect, often tinged with awe and perhaps a bit of fear, with which other pianists viewed him. Horowitz “made me feel deeply ashamed of my persistent negligence and laziness,” Rubinstein confessed, and he was not alone among pianists in this feeling, though he was more eloquent than most in expressing it. Rubinstein finally went into a sort of identity crisis, withdrew from performing until he had radically improved his own playing and ultimately consoled himself with the idea (shared by many other music lovers) that Horowitz might be the better pianist but Rubinstein was the better musician….

Many colleagues considered [Horowitz’s] technique — positioning of hands and fingers, wrist action etc. — awkward and impossible to imitate; it worked for him, but not for others,

This unusual hand position was noticeable with Horowitz’s Chopin, even to me – and that flowing liquid style, as though his fingers were rendered temporarily and magically boneless.

More:

Horowitz’s style frequently involved vast dynamic contrasts, with overwhelming double-fortissimos followed by sudden delicate pianissimos. He was able to produce an extraordinary volume of sound from the piano without producing a harsh tone. He elicited an exceptionally wide range of tonal color, and his taut, precise attack was noticeable even in his renditions of technically undemanding pieces such as the Chopin Mazurkas. He is known for his octave technique; he could play precise passages in octaves extraordinarily quickly. When asked by the pianist Tedd Joselson how he practiced octaves, Horowitz gave a demonstration and Joselson reported, “He practiced them exactly as we were all taught to do.” Music critic and biographer Harvey Sachs submitted that Horowitz may have been “the beneficiary — and perhaps also the victim — of an extraordinary central nervous system and an equally great sensitivity to tone color…

Horowitz’s hand position was unusual in that the palm was often below the level of the key surface. He frequently played chords with straight fingers, and the little finger of his right hand was often curled up until it needed to play a note; to Harold C. Schonberg, “it was like a strike of a cobra.” For all the excitement of his playing…Horowitz’s body was immobile, and his face seldom reflected anything other than intense concentration.

Rubinstein was born in Poland and is considered one of the greatest of Chopin interpreters:

At age two, Rubinstein demonstrated absolute pitch and a fascination with the piano, watching his elder sister’s piano lessons. By the age of four, he was recognised as a child prodigy. His father had a predilection for the violin and offered Rubinstein a violin; but Rubinstein rejected it because he thought his instinct was for harmony and polyphony. The Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, on hearing the four-year-old child play, was greatly impressed, telling Arthur’s family, “This boy may become a very great musician — he certainly has the talent for it… When the time comes for serious study, bring him to me, and I shall be glad to supervise his artistic education.

More:

Rubinstein, who was fluent in eight languages, held much of the repertoire (and not only that of the piano) in his formidable memory…

Rubinstein also had exceptionally developed aural abilities, which allowed him to play whole symphonies in his mind. “At breakfast, I might pass a Brahms symphony in my head,” he said. “Then I am called to the phone, and half an hour later I find it’s been going on all the time and I’m in the third movement.

Regarding Rubenstein and Poland:

At the inauguration of the United Nations in 1945, Rubinstein showed his Polish patriotism at a concert for the delegates. He began the concert by stating his deep disappointment that the conference did not have a delegation from Poland. Rubinstein later described becoming overwhelmed by a blind fury and angrily pointing out to the public the absence of the Polish flag. He stopped playing the piano, told the audience to stand up, including the Soviets, and played the Polish national anthem loudly and slowly, repeating the final part in a great thunderous forte. When he had finished, the public gave him a great ovation.

And here’s a quote from Horowitz:

“I was born very, very lazy and I don’t always practice very long”, he said, “but I must say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpractice. When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a feeling of ‘Oh, I know this’, you play without that little drop of fresh blood that is necessary — and the audience feels it.”

That little drop of fresh blood.