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Yes, a palm tree! An artificial one unfortunately. In 2002, the artist Joanna Rajkowska built it as an artistic "installation" in Charles de Gaulle Square in Warsaw. The citizens took a liking to it so much that it is now is a permanent element of the city landscape, rebuilt using more durable materials.

Palm Tree in Warsaw

Actual living palm in Poland. Note it is snugly against the wall of the house and is probably protected during the winter. (I have five of these in my backyard.)


Trachycarpus fortunei in Poland

Hello, I stumbled on this forum while googling for something, and joined just for this thread. I'm obssessed with Chopin, although I don't play piano even a little bit. I've read a few biographies (most notably, Chopin in Paris by Tad Sculz) and I continue to add to my collection of Chopin music as I find great pianists. This morning I discovered one named Vitalji Margulis, he plays the Etude in A minor like I've never heard it before.

I'm still working my way through all 214 pages of this thread (I think I'm only on page 11) but I feel right at home, and I'm really enjoying this discussion.

Hi, FrChopinFan-- I hope you'll find it worth your while to pick through this thread. (I think you will!)

On Performance Today right now they're reading comments from listeners. One wrote about a performance by Rafal Blechacz, "He plays mazurkas so naturally, they finally make sense." I think those of us who have struggled to plumb the depths of these deceptively "simple" pieces know what he meant!

I am relieved to think that the palm tree in Warsaw is artificial. Or perhaps "relieved" is not the word....

Elene

T. fortunei, a native of China often grown in California, is listed as being hardy to -10 F, or lower. I see climate data listed for Warsaw as having average low temps, in the coldest months, as 21 degrees F, but it can plunge down to -23 F.

Luther Burbank described the palms as having the strongest of wills; very resistant to any kind of horticultural tampering. He found it easier to develop a spineless cactus, which he hoped would serve as food for range cattle. However, cattle did not like it.

Trachycarpus is very slow-growing, so the evidence that the plants have gotten as large as they have in Warsaw suggests that the southern exposure with a heat-trapping roof overhang (with at least some wind protection on the east and west) has spared them--- at least, as long as the last twenty to thirty years.

They are not my favorite palm, but there's no denying they're tough.

FrChopinFan - so glad you found us! I was sooo happy when I first chanced upon this thread a few years back; until then I didn't know anyone as crazy about Chopin as I was. Now I do.

What particularly attracts you about him, as you are a non-pianist? (I got to know him via the printed score first, then by listening and later by reading about his life.)

This -- quoted from you yourself, back in 2006 on page 15:

"what attracts us to Chopin? It seems that he also attracted people during his lifetime with a unique magnetism. He had many, many good and faithful friends who truly loved him and wrote eulogies about him. I think that his music is very much a reflection of the person he was - in real life he was a very private person, but in his music he unstintingly reveals his soul to anyone who cares to listen. And that soul is beautiful. He is very human. We recognise that in him, and it makes some of us love him very much."

I don't think I can say it any better than that.

And this, from loveschopintoomuch, on the same page:

"There is a yearning in all of his music, both the lively mazurkas and the more somber ballades. And it is this yearning that gets to me. Yearning for what? I really don't know."

That sense of yearning draws me in, and I can't get out.


Chopin was like a door for me into classical music, especially piano. I didn't really like it much before, but something resonated. I read everything I could find about him, listened to eveything of his I could -- and it led to an interest in Schumann and Liszt, and then Mozart, Beethoven, Satie and others. But, still, in my mind, Chopin is listed as first and foremost, and way down underneath, there's "everybody else." So he got me interested in classical music, but he's still the standard by which I measure everything else. He's even my mental timeline: "the civil war was in 1865, let's see - that's about 26 years after Chopin died..."

My two goals in life are to put flowers on his grave in Paris (I live in the US and don't actually know that I'll ever get to Europe), and to play the Revolutionary Etude. I have a keyboard for my son when he comes home from college (he's played that etude at a college recital), and I started a beginner piano book a year ago, but had to take a break when I got halfway through with it (life got busy). Actually, I'd be happy if I could play anything of his. Life should be getting back to a more normal pace, and I hope to pick my piano lessons again.

I thought I was the only obsessed Chopin fan -- I'm so happy to find all of you!

I hope I'm not out of line bringing back a three year old discussion - I'm slowly working my way through this thread and I'm still only on page 50! I can usually skim stuff pretty quickly, but these posts have links, and info and technical piano explanations (which are over my head, but still interesting) and things that take some time to thoroughly read.

I'm up to a discussion about why most Chopin devotees don't like George Sand, and there was this:



I don't think she left him to avoid mourning; she was already bored with him long before the actual break-up. Later, Sand actually did nurse a young lover until he died of TB and she seemed heartbroken about the experience. I wonder if she ever thought back of Chopin, who had died by that time?



I've just finished Chopin's Letters. I didn't see that quote in there, although I've read it in a biography. Is this another Chopin myth, or is it actually in one of his letters?

What I did see quite a bit in his letters was Chopin complaining that Jane Stirling and her sister bored him to distraction. Although Jane Stirling meant well, I think he suffered as much with her as he ever did at the hands of Sand. And I suspect that, for all Sand's faults, one positive thing she had going for her was that she surely wasn't boring! Whatever complexities were part of Chopin's make-up, Sand seems to have interested him; Jane Stirling did not.

It's not a myth. Chopin said it on his deathbed to his friend the cellish Auguste Franchomme. I believe the quote was more like, "she said I would die in no arms but hers."

BTW the standard edition of Chopin's Letters is woefully incomplete. We need a new one. Maybe we should start a petition.

Part of the Sterling problem was that Jane's sister was bound and determined to convert him to Protestatism. Can't think of much the would be less likely to endear one to a dying Catholic.

Mmm.

Sand was not bored with Chopin; things were far more complicated than that. I am quite convinced that she did truly love him, though, again, things were far more complicated than that. One can see from what happened with Manceau years later, when he was debilitated and dying, that the similarity to her situation with Chopin was not lost on her, and that she was determined not to make the same mistake with him.

One of Mme Sand's complicated feelings may well have been a desire to avoid the horrible end that was certainly coming; I think Thalamus' point was well taken. However, from her letters, it appears that she believed Chopin would be healthier and happier if he was away from her and from their dysfunctional, stressful relationship. I don't think that was a matter of hypocrisy on her part. It fits with the medical thinking of the time, and it seems likely to me that she actually did believe it. This is one reason I don't accuse her of "abandoning" him. I don't think it was meant that way.

I don't think it's quite accurate to characterize Chopin as a Catholic at the end of his life. But certainly, he was not interested in being converted to the Scottish ladies' religious views.

Elene

I wondered if there was something missing. I think we do need a new one!

Wasn't there someone here who was going to learn Polish so they could read the letters in their original language? Maybe I'll find out as I continue through the rest of the thread (it could be days - I'm averaging 30 pages in a day).



I was hoping this was not true; it makes the whole thing so much more tragic.

As James Joyce said in a similar situation, "I've lost my faith, not my mind!"

FrChopinFan - It's so good to have a new hard core Chopinoholic to rehash this all out with.

Congratulations on trying to go through the whole thread. This is truly remarkable!

It's not really remarkable when you consider that I feel compelled. People are talking about Chopin, and I'm missing out! I wish I'd been here from the beginning.

About the letters-- I keep wishing for "real" research skills like "real" musicologists have! If the edition of Chopin's letters is inadequate, is there anything we ourselves can do about it? This is mostly a rhetorical question, but I am itching to make some kind of concrete contribution to the literature.

(I haven't even finished the song transpositions/transcriptions that I've been wanting to make available to everyone.)

FrChopinFan, I'm working on learning Polish, but I wouldn't be the person you're thinking of. And I'm a long, long way from being able to translate letters, though I can read some of them a little bit now.

I'm terribly pleased with myself because I've learned the endings for accusative case! It's a small accomplishment, but at least my brain no longer seizes up at the very thought of case endings.

Elene

I really hope this isn't a no-no, digging out old posts. This one is from Apr 2007.



I've had the Op 45 Prelude playing, and this idea is intriguing. If Chopin had lived longer and continued to compose, would he have done a turnaround and become more modern? Is that what happens to composers as they mature and explore what they can do with music, and start wanting to "push the envelope?" I remember trying to figure out a later piece of Mozart, and it was surprisingly modern and not always easy to listen to - I don't know if the term I'm thinking of is atonal or disharmonic. As understanding and appreciation of music grows and matures, is that where it inevitably leads, both for the composer and the listener? It's interesting to wonder what direction Chopin would have gone in. Liszt lived a long time - I'm not as familiar with his music, but did he get more modern in that sense as he got older?

'If Chopin had lived longer and continued to compose, would he have done a turnaround and become more modern? Is that what happens to composers as they mature and explore what they can do with music, and start wanting to "push the envelope?"'

Remember the Wikipedia article on the Chopin from the fictional "Il Bethisad" universe? I'm still chuckling over the idea of Chopin living to be 94 and continuing to innovate to such a degree that nobody could figure out what he was doing anymore. In the case of the real Chopin, though, there was a change of style around 1848 that affected him along with others. That Op. 45 prelude sounds rather like Brahms to me.

' I remember trying to figure out a later piece of Mozart, and it was surprisingly modern and not always easy to listen to - I don't know if the term I'm thinking of is atonal or disharmonic. As understanding and appreciation of music grows and matures, is that where it inevitably leads, both for the composer and the listener?'

Maybe not inevitable, I don't know, but I guess not surprising.

' It's interesting to wonder what direction Chopin would have gone in. Liszt lived a long time - I'm not as familiar with his music, but did he get more modern in that sense as he got older?'

As far as I know he did get more modern. Liszt blossomed as a composer much later than Chopin did.

Elene

i think the berceuse op. 58 is the most dominant peice in which you can hear some of the changes in chopin's more mature compositions, (i know he wanted first to call it variantes),in which his style changed, i mean you can clearly hear where debussy had taken his muse from. its such an abstract peice, yet so amazingly crafted :), i wish chopin whould have survived a bit longer to see what he whould write afterwards, but think he single handidly took the piano the upper hierarchy of music

That's my favorite piece - yet I always think that I don't "get" modern/abstract music...

I haven't come across that - maybe I'm that far in the thread yet?