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Frederic Chopin: Pianos
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Chopin's achievements are closely related to the improvements in the piano, particularly the extension of the keyboard. He was adroit in his use of the pedal to obtain gradations of color and sonority. He experimented with new fingerings, using the thumb or the fifth finger on black notes, sliding the same finger from a black note to a white one, and passing the fourth finger over the fifth. Even his most complicated pieces lie easily under a pianist's fingers because the works are idiomatically suited to the instrument. His creative imagination raised the étude from a practice piece to the concert stage. Chopin's harmonic innovations, often concealed beneath a soaring lyricism, place him on an equal footing with Liszt and Richard Wagner, both of whom extended conventional concepts of tonality.
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The second of four children of French born Nicholas Chopin and his Polish wife Justina, Frederic was born in Warsaw, Poland on the 1st March, 1810, and became a child prodigy. His Polonaise in G was published in 1817, and a year later, at the age of eight, his brilliant piano technique captivated Warsaw's society audiences.
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One well-known Chopin composition surfaces in a very curious context in Luis Buñuel's Tristana (1970). Tristana can play the piano but gave it up when her mother died. She becomes the ward of a lecherous, hypocritical guardian, Don Lope, who takes sexual advantage of her. He preaches working at what gives pleasure and freedom in love but only when it suits himself -- his reactionary moralisms are in conflict with his socialist vision. Tristana falls for an artist, Horacio, and leaves with him. Meanwhile, Don Lupe inherits a fortune from his sister that keeps him from becoming impoverished.
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Chopin was a skilled pianist, and a large proportion of his works are for solo piano. Many of these works are fairly short in duration, such as the Preludes, Etudes, Waltzes, Impromptus, Nocturnes and Scherzos, as well as the previously mentioned Polish dance forms of the Mazurka and Polonaise. Chopin ... developed a form called the Ballade which is a more extended work, fairly free in style like a stream of consciousness, but with an internal logic. He also wrote a number of multi-movement works including of course several Piano Sonatas. He was quite capable of writing for other instruments and did so at times, his two Piano Concertos (for solo Piano and Orchestra) being obvious examples.
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Frédéric Chopin, the greatest of the Polish composers, was born in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw on February 22, 1810 of a French father, and a Polish mother. He spent the first 20 years of his life in Warsaw, where he was able to hear many of the premier artists of the time perform. Chopin first studied piano at the Warsaw Conservatory, and became very proficient on the instrument by the time he reached his early teens. He played his first concert at the age of 7, and was a published composer by the time he turned 15.
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In 1829 in Warsaw, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play, and he ... met the German pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel. It was also back in 1829 that Chopin met his first love, a singing student named Konstancja Gładkowska. This inspired Chopin to put the melody of the human voice into his works. Chopin also paid his first visit to Vienna in that year, where he gave two piano performances and received mixed notices, including many very favourable reviews and others that criticised the small tone he produced from the piano.
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