Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Just for those totally devoted to Chopin

Randomly, here's an article I wrote a few years ago on Chopin and arm-weight: https://app.box.com/s/sr5v5g1pdwnxd3uxaxp1uwrzzg80795l

'Chopin Competition to be streamed in virtual reality
10:40, 8th November 2019
The International Fryderyk Chopin Competition has announced a series of technological advances for the broadcasting of its 18th edition in October 2020

In an event hosted by the Chopin Society UK, Dr Artur Szklener, director of Warsaw’s Fryderyk Chopin Institute, revealed that the 2020 Chopin Competition will be the first major classical music event to use virtual reality technology.

With a VR camera positioned close to the pianist on stage, remote viewers will be able to experience performances from the pianist’s perspective from the stage of the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw. Anybody owning VR goggles will be able to watch the VR streaming at chopin2020.pl. For others, the competition is introducing special Listener Zones all over the world for viewers to share the virtual reality experience.

The Listener Zones – in cities including Moscow, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, London and New York – will be physical spaces where remote audiences can come together for an in-depth competition experience. This will include live broadcasts – in both traditional and virtual reality formats – audio commentaries from musicologists and stars of the piano world, and live concerts for local audiences.'

https://www.rhinegold.co.uk/interna...ition-to-be-streamed-in-virtual-reality/

Happy 210th birthday to Our Friend!

Have we actually got a definite date now?

Chopin has two birthdays a year, lucky chap.

Poor Rossini, on the other hand, only has a birthday every four years......

BTW, did anyone celebrate his birthday this year?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LypsUPowd2w
https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/tournedos-rossini-recipe

We've always had a definite date. If his mom said he was born March 1, I believe her!

(I don't know precisely what she said about it, of course, but we're told that his family considered March 1 to be his birthday.)

We can bypass the issue by doing the proper Slavic thing and celebrating his name-day, March 5.

I consider March 1-5 to be the High Holy Days for Chopinophiles.

Elene

Like Chopin's music, this thread lives on!

I did some research into the Carnegie Hall performance database for a keyboard lit class I took. Chopin is by far the most often programmed composer in solo piano recitals. And the most often programed piece? the g minor Ballade.

Sam

That is a fascinating article and helped me place the piano tradition my former teacher belonged to. She was pure Russian method but apparently that method is derived from Chopin's teaching philosophy. I always thought it was based on Liszt.
Thanks.

I don't even know why he decided he would call this Op. 23 thing a Ballade. What did the word mean? What was his intention prior to composition...and then toward the end?

Why NOT call it a ballade? What makes it seem not ballade-like to you?

(Not arguing with you, just asking.)

Elene

Because Ballade had not been invented yet?

The term was apparently in use well before Chopin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballade_(classical_music)

It's thought that the four ballades relate to poetry by Mickiewicz, but as far as I know it hasn't been certain which ballades may relate to which poems.

Jeff Kallberg may be able to help us out again, and/or others here may remember this subject better than I do.

Elene

There are certainly some etymological curiosities to explore. My impression was that for piano, no composer had given the label "Ballade" to a work.

Chopin was original in many ways. No surprise.

Elene

The longer I am alive, the more original he seems to me. My admiration has only grown.

Although the ballade did exist before Chopin's time, he put his own very definable stamp on the framework. He broke from the "traditional" laws governing the original form. There are undertones of the narrative in the works, but to actually associate them to a specific poem or "story" is impossible.

Did he deliberately incorporate a dance element into the four work or did he sense that the ballades origins lie there?


Paraphrased from Eleanor Baille's "Chopin, A graded practical guide".

While we're on the subject...

For some light and comical reading, I recommend Alan Rusbridger's "Play It Again, An Amateur Against the Impossible". The impossible, in this case, is Chopin's Gm Ballade. Alan decides that he could learn to play the ballade in a year. As editor of The Guardian, he has a busy life, but nonetheless takes on the self-impossed challenge. It certainly helps to be familiar with the ballade but not necessary to be able to play it😢. Phew!

Such a motivating and well written book. I now play every morning before work and it's so worth it. I didn't know that ballad before and this helped make me a huge fan.

So glad the book motivated you.

There is a similar book called, "Piano Lessons.". The author , Noah Adams, chose "Traumerei" as his challenge. He actually bought a $11,000 piano when he didn't really know how to play. An interesting story about Horowitz returning to Russia after many years to give a concert. He played Traumerei as an encore. There wasn't a dry eye in the audience. Something like...music written by a German used by the Russians to commemorate their fallen countrymen, killed while fighting the Germans.

Though the term "ballade" was very familiar in the world of vocal music, it was (as far as we currently know) first used as a title for solo piano music in 1835-36. Both Chopin and Clara Wieck wrote solo ballades at around the same time, and I suppose it's possible to figure out who came first. But it's not all that interesting a question, since the the general practice of deriving solo piano genres from vocal genres was already well-established (the "nocturne" was a vocal genre before it was solo piano piece, and of course there are the Mendelssohn (Felix and Fanny) "songs without words".

Jeff Kallberg