Oscar Wilde said of the composer, “After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.”.
Try to find how you personally jive to Chopin, for he speaks to the poet in all of us. “Raindrop” is melancholic, while the excitement of “Winter Wind” carries me off in frigid turmoil. I have to make sure I’m on the same wavelength as the piece before I listen to it. Personal Notes: I find Chopin to be an extremely subjective composer. It ends in the rush of a chillingly biting storm. The theme, kept mainly in the left hand throughout the étude, pushes the direction of the piece, while the right hand precipitates over it with flashes of virtuosity. Notice how the left hand (the lower-pitched notes) plays the theme of the introduction under the blustery right hand. This étude opens with a slow introduction anticipating the blizzard that later erupts across the keyboard. They were intended for study but are so beautiful they have entered the standard repertoire. His sets of études fuse virtuosic technique with vibrant melodies. “Winter Wind” is the eleventh of Chopin’s 12 Études, Op. A stormier section comes, where the raindrops sound like six-inch balls of hail, but the lamenting section returns and the piece ends solemnly and gorgeously. The piece begins with a slow, lamenting melody in the right hand over repeated notes in the left hand which sound like raindrops to some. The name “Raindrop” was given by legendary pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, not by Chopin. Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier, which is organized in a similar fashion. Each of the 24 is in a different key, paying homage to J. While the genre of the prelude implies that they are introductions to something, they are instead a set of stand-alone pieces. The Pieces: “Raindrop” is the fifteenth of Chopin’s set of 24 Preludes, Op. He also fostered a 10-year liaison with George Sand (pen name for the female novelist Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin), who was a great source of inspiration. Aside from performing and composing, another source of income was teaching, and he often dedicated pieces to his pupils. He established himself in Paris, and rather than develop a flashy virtuoso career, he preferred the bourgeois setting of the salon for its intimacy.
Chopin sought to take the piano literature to new heights, combining his unique and highly emotional style with a brilliant instinct for dramatic phrasing and melody.īorn in Poland, he was proud of his homeland throughout his life and even drew on Polish folk music for his own compositions. His compositions helped to define virtuosity: they are not only technically difficult, but also require incredible nuance from the performer. Chopin (pronounced SHO-pan) established his reputation as the “poet of the piano,” as all of his works incorporate the instrument, and most of them are solo pieces. Recommended Recordings: Arthur Rubinstein for “Raindrop” and Maurizio Pollini for “Winter Wind” or Martha Argerich for bothĬomposer: Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849). Will you recognize them? You’ll get the feeling you do Étude - a piece intended for study purposes and to improve technique Genres: Prelude - a short piece meant as an introduction.
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