Chopin and his friends

Bach, the teacher in the background

Wikipedia says Chopin cited Bach and Mozart as the two most important composers in shaping his musical outlook. The prelude and fugue named on the programme is the eighteenth in the second volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier, written in 1738. In 1833 Chopin, Liszt and Ferdinand Hiller played a Bach concerto for three keyboards together in Paris. A fugue beside the nocturnes shows where his discipline came from. The prelude is mostly made of sixteenth notes and eighth notes, and in the second half of the fugue its two subjects are combined, according to Wikipedia.

Beethoven, the tradition he was taught

Wikipedia says Chopin was educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi. The programme names a Beethoven piano sonata, which gives the evening a classical anchor. The contrast is useful: a sonata builds an argument over several movements, while Chopin's pieces tend to catch a single mood. You do not need to know the sonata to feel the difference between the two ways of writing.

Liszt, the friend

Chopin dedicated the first set of his études to his friend Franz Liszt, and the Revolutionary Étude is the last in that set. The two were not always in step: in 1843 Chopin was annoyed when Liszt played one of his nocturnes with numerous added embellishments. Liszt's Sonnet 104 of Petrarch belongs to the Italian volume of his Years of Pilgrimage, composed between 1837 and 1849 and published in 1858. Liszt was in the audience at Chopin's Paris debut on 26 February 1832 and wrote that even the most vigorous applause seemed not enough for his enthusiasm.

Schumann, the first cheer

On 7 December 1831 Robert Schumann reviewed Chopin's Op. 2 variations and wrote, "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius." That was Schumann's first published article on music. The programme names his Papillons, written in 1831 when he was 21, a suite of twelve movements meant to represent a masked ball. Its last movement suggests a clock striking the end of the ball.

Mozart, the other teacher

Mozart is not named on the ticket, but Wikipedia says Chopin cited Bach and Mozart together as the two most important composers in shaping his outlook. It adds that Chopin also drew on Polish folk music and on Italian opera. It also says that much of his typical ornamentation is taken from singing, and the polonaise comes from a Polish dance. The friends are on the programme to show where those singing and dancing habits came from.

Rachmaninoff, the picture in the study

Rachmaninoff composed his Op. 33 Études-Tableaux between August and September 1911. The title is translated as study pictures: pieces meant as musical evocations of something seen. Like the études of Chopin and Liszt, they are concert pieces and not exercises. They were written decades after Chopin's études and show where the étude went next.

Why mix them

A programme of Chopin alone would be coherent, but the friends make it a conversation: a teacher, a tradition, a colleague, an admirer and a successor. The organiser may change the programme, and the booking page also names Prokofiev, so the exact mix on your night is not promised. Whatever you hear, the thread is the piano and its candlelit room.

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