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- Vienna, the
11th of August, 1829.

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00:00:23,762 --> 00:00:27,929
Vienna, the home of Hayden,
Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart.

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00:00:31,745 --> 00:00:33,887
Vienna, the home of opera,

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00:00:37,005 --> 00:00:40,588
opera such as Mozart's
famous Don Giovanni.

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On this summer's night in 1829,

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a teenager, shy and
sickly took to the stage

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to play a variation of Mozart's melody.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Frederic Chopin.

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In the countryside to the
west of Warsaw in this house,

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00:02:29,193 --> 00:02:32,443
Frederic Chopin was born early in 1810.

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His French father, Nicolas,
came to Poland in 1787

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when he was 16.

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When revolution then swept France,

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Nicolas stayed, married,

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and taught French to
aristocratic families.

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Now he had a son.

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This house was on the grounds
of the Skarbek family estate,

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to whom Chopin's mother
Justyna was related.

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00:03:03,575 --> 00:03:05,841
But the year Frederic was born,

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Nicolas was offered a
position teaching French

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at a leading secondary school in Warsaw.

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Warsaw then was the
capital of a minor state

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on the fringes of Napoleon's empire.

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For decades, it had been
carved up by Russia,

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Austria, and Prussia.

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00:03:30,352 --> 00:03:34,519
Now under Napoleon French
language and culture reigned.

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The Poles had thrown their
lot in with Napoleon,

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hoping for the reward
of an independent state.

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But Napoleon's downfall would see Poland

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swallowed up by the Russian Empire.

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Discontent was never far from the surface,

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yet at the same time,

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this was one of the great
cities of Eastern Europe.

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Warsaw was an artistically
sophisticated city.

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In 1817, Chopin's parents
moved with Frederic

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and his three sisters to an apartment

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00:04:19,493 --> 00:04:23,794
in a wing of the school
where Nicolas taught.

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To supplement his income,

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Nicolas started a boarding
house for students.

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It was a very musical home.

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- Chopin was born to music.

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His father himself said
that he had never had

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any trouble playing the piano.

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It's very hard to understand

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how one can be born with a
talent for playing the piano,

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which is an
extremely unnatural activity,

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but he apparently was.

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His father said, "The problem
of technique at the piano

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"never detained you
for more than an hour."

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- For me, when it comes
to Frederic Chopin,

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one has to look at the very beginnings

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of his compositional career.

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He was completely natural pianist,

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he was a completely natural composer,

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even from a very young age.

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If you think back to
his first composition,

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which was a polonaise, he
wasn't born an aristocrat,

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and a polonaise is an aristocratic dance.

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He captured it completely
and idiomatically

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from the time he was seven.

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Already it's regal.

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I think when you look at
Chopin and you ask yourself

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where does something like this come from,

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perhaps the only answer could be

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that such a thing comes from God.

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- As an eight-year-old,

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Chopin gave his first public performance

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at the Radziwillow Palace,
today's Presidential Palace.

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The young boy was soon in demand

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to play in fashionable
homes in and around Warsaw.

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Chopin's parents decided
that this precocious talent

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needed proper tuition.

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- By this point, the
Chopin family was living

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on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie,

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which is Warsaw's main street,

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and Father was teaching
French at the Warsaw Lyceum.

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Down the street was the
church, and on weekends,

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on Sunday, the family would to church,

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they would make friends, and of course,

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Father makes friends with other men there.

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His name was Wojciech Zywny,

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and Zywny was a music teacher.

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You know how it is, you
bring a music teacher home,

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he tells you, I have
a son, he plays piano,

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he has an aptitude for the keyboard,

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he likes to compose, maybe
you can teach him something.

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Well, Chopin had described
Zywny in one of his letters,

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and I always imagined Zywny to
have this huge bulbous nose,

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to be rather hefty, to drink too much,

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Chopin described him as someone

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who didn't bathe all that often.

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I had in my imagination that
you touch Zywny like this

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00:08:25,564 --> 00:08:28,923
and the dust would come out of his coat.

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00:08:28,923 --> 00:08:31,574
But I saw a drawing of him,
and he wasn't like that at all.

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In fact, he was quite slim,

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and in the drawing at least
he was very well put together.

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And so Father brings him home

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and there they are about
to have music lessons.

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The only trouble was
Zywny was a violinist,

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and thankfully this was
probably responsible

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for him staying out of Chopin's way

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so that Chopin could create his own way

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to play the pianoforte.

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- Violin teacher or not,

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Zywny was certainly influential,

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not least in encouraging
Chopin to study in depth

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the works of the classical masters,

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00:09:04,685 --> 00:09:06,935
above all, Bach and Mozart.

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- Chopin owed a great debt to Bach.

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There's a lot of counterpoint,

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which you often don't
hear when pianists play

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because they're only
concerned with the right hand

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and it makes them sound thin

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and without the richness of the harmony,

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but there's a lot of
counterpoint in Chopin

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and you feel his debt to Bach.

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There's something in the melodic line

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that comes directly out of Mozart.

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In fact, the principle of the rubato

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that is necessary for Chopin

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is in a certain way also
necessary for Mozart,

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a different kind of rubato
and a different style,

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but the fact that the right hand plays

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with a certain amount of freedom,

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but not so much so that it influences

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the regularity of the accompaniment.

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- Chopin the piano pupil
was exposed to music

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which had a continuous sound.

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The violin can of course
keep the sound going

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and it can even increase
the sound on any given note.

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The piano goes in the opposite direction.

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With the piano, it starts at its loudest

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and then inevitably diminishes,

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so these two instruments are
actually polar opposites,

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but in terms of Chopin's early exposure

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to the playing of melody, for instance,

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he imbibed this singing sense

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of a supple line full of
changes of tone and color

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that a violinist has
at his or her disposal,

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and so guided partly
by the example of Zywny

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and his violin,

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and partly by the music
which Zywny favored,

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Bach and Mozart,

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Chopin devised I would say
only semi-consciously perhaps

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00:11:05,819 --> 00:11:08,593
an entirely new way of playing the piano,

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a concept of piano sound

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which had never been approached before.

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- In 1825,
the 15-year-old schoolboy

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00:12:06,217 --> 00:12:09,843
took a piece he had written
to a local music publisher.

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00:12:09,843 --> 00:12:13,010
It was accepted and printed as Opus 1.

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- The rondo Opus 1 in C minor,

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this one for me, this shows a really young

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and energetic, versatile musician

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that really explores different ideas

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that come up to his
mind while just playing.

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He was 15, 16 when he composed this piece.

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- Dear
friend, I am well and jolly.

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I can now ride,

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though the horse goes
slowly wherever he prefers

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00:13:01,240 --> 00:13:04,887
while I sit fearfully on his
back like a monkey on a bear.

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00:13:04,887 --> 00:13:09,054
Flies often land on my lofty
nose, but that's unimportant.

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00:13:10,358 --> 00:13:12,932
Dear friend, I am sorry
if you've been wondering

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about my long silence,

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00:13:14,301 --> 00:13:17,982
but do remember how many
hundreds of pieces of music

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all in disorder on the
piano, like peas and cabbage,

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lie in wait for me.

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00:13:26,673 --> 00:13:29,231
The Barber of Seville was played
on Saturday in the theater.

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I liked it very much.

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Also a certain Mr. Rembielinski
had come from Paris

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and plays the piano as I have
never yet heard it played.

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You can imagine what a joy that is for us.

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We never hear anything
of real excellence here.

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His left hand is as strong as his right,

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which is an unusual thing
to find in one person.

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00:14:04,038 --> 00:14:08,353
Dear friend, I am appointed
organist for the school church,

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00:14:08,353 --> 00:14:10,482
so you see my future
wife and all my children

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00:14:10,482 --> 00:14:12,921
will have double cause to respect me,

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00:14:12,921 --> 00:14:16,528
after the priest, the most
important person there.

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00:14:16,528 --> 00:14:18,695
Every Sunday I play organ.

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00:14:24,659 --> 00:14:26,756
- Yet always in the background

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00:14:26,756 --> 00:14:30,923
were weaknesses in his health,
above all tuberculosis.

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00:14:33,518 --> 00:14:36,118
- Dear
friend, everyone's fallen ill,

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00:14:36,118 --> 00:14:37,623
and I too.

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00:14:37,623 --> 00:14:39,142
You may have thought
that all this scribbling

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is being done at a
table, but you're wrong.

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00:14:41,541 --> 00:14:44,101
It's from under my quilt
and comes out of a head

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00:14:44,101 --> 00:14:47,528
that's been aching for the last four days.

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00:14:47,528 --> 00:14:48,982
They have put leeches on my throat

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00:14:48,982 --> 00:14:51,649
because the glands have swelled.

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- Chopin had outgrown Zywny

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and had been receiving
occasional instruction

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00:14:57,614 --> 00:14:59,424
from Jozef Elsner,

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00:14:59,424 --> 00:15:04,101
composer and principal conductor
at the National Theater.

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00:15:04,101 --> 00:15:07,560
At 16, Chopin became a full-time student

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00:15:07,560 --> 00:15:09,488
at his music conservatory

198
00:15:09,488 --> 00:15:13,042
based at the University of Warsaw.

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00:15:13,042 --> 00:15:17,549
- People tend to think that
Warsaw was a modest place

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00:15:17,549 --> 00:15:22,336
because we remember the ruins
after the Second World War.

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00:15:22,336 --> 00:15:24,848
Actually, in the lifetime of Chopin,

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00:15:24,848 --> 00:15:28,169
it was a really beautiful place.

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00:15:28,169 --> 00:15:30,173
Chopin grew up among scholars.

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He grew up among books.

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The university library was filled

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with some 130,000 books.

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00:15:38,258 --> 00:15:42,664
This was place filled
with culture, with music.

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Because of the Napoleonic Period,

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00:15:44,488 --> 00:15:47,058
many musicians came to Warsaw,

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00:15:47,058 --> 00:15:50,558
so Chopin was born in best possible period

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00:15:51,467 --> 00:15:54,640
in the Polish history of the 19th century.

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00:15:54,640 --> 00:15:59,418
- It had theaters, opera
houses, opera companies,

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00:15:59,418 --> 00:16:03,607
orchestras, famous musicians
came and played in Warsaw.

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00:16:03,607 --> 00:16:06,183
Chopin heard Paganini in Warsaw.

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00:16:06,183 --> 00:16:10,863
Chopin was exposed to enormous
amounts of opera in Warsaw.

216
00:16:10,863 --> 00:16:15,713
Bach and Mozart were played,
they were certainly taught.

217
00:16:15,713 --> 00:16:17,287
Beethoven was well-known,

218
00:16:17,287 --> 00:16:20,620
though not as well-known
as in Vienna, obviously,

219
00:16:20,620 --> 00:16:23,829
but certainly the idea that Chopin grew up

220
00:16:23,829 --> 00:16:27,412
in a kind of provincial,
deprived community

221
00:16:29,586 --> 00:16:30,827
is absolute nonsense.

222
00:16:30,827 --> 00:16:34,077
It was an immensely sophisticated city.

223
00:16:34,995 --> 00:16:37,896
2nd of November, 1826.

224
00:16:37,896 --> 00:16:40,955
Dear friend, the doctors are telling me

225
00:16:40,955 --> 00:16:43,341
to walk as much as possible.

226
00:16:43,341 --> 00:16:45,905
Meanwhile I go to Elsner
for strict counterpoint

227
00:16:45,905 --> 00:16:47,345
six hours a week.

228
00:16:47,345 --> 00:16:49,152
I go to bed at 9 p.m.

229
00:16:49,152 --> 00:16:52,933
All teas, soirees, and balls are off.

230
00:16:52,933 --> 00:16:55,711
I live off oatmeal like a horse.

231
00:16:55,711 --> 00:16:59,263
Maybe Paris would be better for me.

232
00:16:59,263 --> 00:17:03,781
- Tuberculosis
took its toll in 1827,

233
00:17:03,781 --> 00:17:07,948
but it claimed Chopin's adored
14-year-old sister Emilia.

234
00:17:09,883 --> 00:17:11,737
- Emilia was the house poet,

235
00:17:11,737 --> 00:17:14,496
and he said that she was
masterful at writing little plays,

236
00:17:14,496 --> 00:17:15,950
and they would perform them,

237
00:17:15,950 --> 00:17:18,750
and then he would accompany and direct,

238
00:17:18,750 --> 00:17:21,661
and I can only imagine what it was like

239
00:17:21,661 --> 00:17:24,670
when she fell ill and
he suddenly lost her,

240
00:17:24,670 --> 00:17:28,142
his friend, his sister, the
younger sister, no less,

241
00:17:28,142 --> 00:17:31,549
and the miraculous talent,
everybody thought, in the house.

242
00:17:31,549 --> 00:17:33,603
And I think the only time

243
00:17:33,603 --> 00:17:35,852
that I have felt so deeply for Chopin,

244
00:17:35,852 --> 00:17:37,460
more than I feel on a daily basis

245
00:17:37,460 --> 00:17:39,315
when I encounter his music,

246
00:17:39,315 --> 00:17:40,968
and I do every day at the piano,

247
00:17:40,968 --> 00:17:44,222
was when I visited
Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw

248
00:17:44,222 --> 00:17:46,972
and came upon his sister's grave.

249
00:17:49,064 --> 00:17:53,518
To stand there and
imagine the kind of pain,

250
00:17:53,518 --> 00:17:56,441
I somehow thought I understood

251
00:17:56,441 --> 00:17:58,043
what that must have been like.

252
00:17:58,043 --> 00:18:01,042
I wondered where did it lead in his music

253
00:18:01,042 --> 00:18:03,404
and what would have come out of that pain.

254
00:18:16,966 --> 00:18:18,902
- The family
couldn't bear to live

255
00:18:18,902 --> 00:18:21,044
where Emilia had died.

256
00:18:21,044 --> 00:18:23,753
They moved to a large
third floor apartment

257
00:18:23,753 --> 00:18:26,420
in this central Warsaw building.

258
00:18:30,347 --> 00:18:34,424
Here Chopin continued
to study and compose.

259
00:20:07,977 --> 00:20:11,126
Chopin's teacher was impressed.

260
00:20:11,126 --> 00:20:14,807
Elsner thought his student
had amazing capabilities

261
00:20:14,807 --> 00:20:17,474
and was simply a musical genius.

262
00:20:19,525 --> 00:20:24,275
In July, 1829, Chopin left
the Warsaw Conservatory,

263
00:20:24,275 --> 00:20:26,582
and like any teenage school-leaver,

264
00:20:26,582 --> 00:20:28,665
wondered what to do next.

265
00:20:30,776 --> 00:20:34,943
Where else to go but the heart
of popular music, Vienna?

266
00:20:40,367 --> 00:20:44,512
After a pilgrimage to Mozart's
birthplace in Salzburg,

267
00:20:44,512 --> 00:20:48,262
Chopin arrived in Vienna
on the 31st of July.

268
00:20:49,349 --> 00:20:52,432
11 days later he performed in public.

269
00:21:10,026 --> 00:21:11,633
Haslinger, my publisher,

270
00:21:11,633 --> 00:21:13,711
told me it would be
better for my compositions

271
00:21:13,711 --> 00:21:16,222
if I gave concerts in Vienna,

272
00:21:16,222 --> 00:21:17,825
that no one knows my name,

273
00:21:17,825 --> 00:21:20,146
that the compositions are difficult.

274
00:21:20,146 --> 00:21:22,871
I felt I was not ready
to do myself justice,

275
00:21:22,871 --> 00:21:26,097
but they hammered at me till I consented,

276
00:21:26,097 --> 00:21:29,264
and the posters were out the next day.

277
00:21:31,463 --> 00:21:35,641
- When we hear this, we
realize it is so varying.

278
00:21:35,641 --> 00:21:39,534
It is a very early piece,
very fresh, very spontaneous,

279
00:21:39,534 --> 00:21:43,617
but a lot of Chopin
qualities that we are used to

280
00:21:46,163 --> 00:21:50,330
notice in later works are
already present in this.

281
00:21:55,588 --> 00:21:59,109
- The concert of
the 11th of August, 1829,

282
00:21:59,109 --> 00:22:00,776
was a great success.

283
00:22:01,848 --> 00:22:03,726
- I
played out of desperation,

284
00:22:03,726 --> 00:22:05,963
but the variations produced such an effect

285
00:22:05,963 --> 00:22:08,478
that I was obliged to return to the stage.

286
00:22:08,478 --> 00:22:11,067
The Viennese papers
praised me enthusiastically

287
00:22:11,067 --> 00:22:14,236
and I played a second
concert as they begged me to.

288
00:22:14,236 --> 00:22:17,012
That second time I played
the Krakowiak Rondo.

289
00:22:17,012 --> 00:22:19,262
It too was a great success.

290
00:22:22,274 --> 00:22:24,835
About the second concert,
one newspaper wrote,

291
00:22:24,835 --> 00:22:27,672
"This is a young man who goes his own road

292
00:22:27,672 --> 00:22:29,309
"on which he knows how to please

293
00:22:29,309 --> 00:22:31,892
"and which differs from all others.

294
00:22:31,892 --> 00:22:35,225
"Mr. Chopin gives universal satisfaction."

295
00:23:56,976 --> 00:23:59,738
- Chopin
returned briefly to Poland,

296
00:23:59,738 --> 00:24:01,641
but the 19-year-old already knew

297
00:24:01,641 --> 00:24:03,891
that his future lay abroad.

298
00:24:05,881 --> 00:24:07,176
- Dear friend,

299
00:24:07,176 --> 00:24:10,226
I'm sure you will see that
I must go back to Vienna,

300
00:24:10,226 --> 00:24:14,025
not for Miss Blahetka, who is
young, pretty, and a pianist.

301
00:24:14,025 --> 00:24:17,413
Actually I have my eyes
on another of whom I dream

302
00:24:17,413 --> 00:24:19,715
and have served faithfully,
though silently,

303
00:24:19,715 --> 00:24:21,532
for half a year.

304
00:24:21,532 --> 00:24:25,273
Anyway, I shall go from
Vienna to Italy to study,

305
00:24:25,273 --> 00:24:28,606
and next winter I expect to be in Paris.

306
00:24:30,015 --> 00:24:32,515
Warsaw, 20th of October, 1829.

307
00:24:33,584 --> 00:24:36,454
Kessler gives little
musical evenings on Fridays.

308
00:24:36,454 --> 00:24:40,236
Last Friday week we had
Beethoven's last quartet.

309
00:24:40,236 --> 00:24:44,405
I haven't heard anything
so great for a long time.

310
00:24:44,405 --> 00:24:47,687
Beethoven snaps his
fingers at the whole world.

311
00:24:58,962 --> 00:25:02,144
You can't think how much I
feel something is missing

312
00:25:02,144 --> 00:25:03,311
in Warsaw now.

313
00:25:15,500 --> 00:25:19,693
- Chopin needed
a broader portfolio.

314
00:25:19,693 --> 00:25:22,943
In 1830, he completed a piano concerto.

315
00:28:41,860 --> 00:28:44,195
- He has a sense for this melancholy,

316
00:28:44,195 --> 00:28:47,362
for this drama, for pain in his music.

317
00:28:48,514 --> 00:28:50,486
Apparently over a lot of his pieces

318
00:28:50,486 --> 00:28:53,684
he wrote the Polish word
,

319
00:28:53,684 --> 00:28:57,851
which I am told means something
like regret, like pain,

320
00:28:59,980 --> 00:29:03,149
and to find this
expression is the key thing

321
00:29:03,149 --> 00:29:04,843
for the performer really,

322
00:29:04,843 --> 00:29:08,260
but a personality either has this ability

323
00:29:09,853 --> 00:29:12,686
to sense these deep human emotions

324
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:17,165
or they don't,

325
00:29:17,165 --> 00:29:21,332
and it's a mixture of their
personal relationships,

326
00:29:22,180 --> 00:29:24,455
of their surrounding also,

327
00:29:24,455 --> 00:29:26,568
maybe the political circumstance

328
00:29:26,568 --> 00:29:29,651
of their home country, their culture,

329
00:29:30,661 --> 00:29:32,078
and their talent.

330
00:29:46,666 --> 00:29:49,998
Warsaw, 27th of March, 1830.

331
00:29:49,998 --> 00:29:51,851
The hall was full.

332
00:29:51,851 --> 00:29:53,929
Both boxes and stalls had been sold out

333
00:29:53,929 --> 00:29:56,402
three days in advance.

334
00:29:56,402 --> 00:29:58,319
I can't endure the misery

335
00:29:58,319 --> 00:30:00,859
of those last days before a concert.

336
00:30:00,859 --> 00:30:03,908
Elsner complained he couldn't
hear my bass passages.

337
00:30:03,908 --> 00:30:07,392
The orchestra complained
that I played too quietly.

338
00:30:07,392 --> 00:30:09,593
The concerts didn't earn me much.

339
00:30:09,593 --> 00:30:11,499
All the money went to
the theater's cashier,

340
00:30:11,499 --> 00:30:13,764
and he does as he likes.

341
00:30:13,764 --> 00:30:15,222
The official bulletin declared

342
00:30:15,222 --> 00:30:17,206
that the Poles should be as proud of me

343
00:30:17,206 --> 00:30:19,943
as the Germans are of Mozart.

344
00:30:19,943 --> 00:30:21,360
Obvious nonsense.

345
00:31:11,695 --> 00:31:15,166
- Composers have developed
at very different times.

346
00:31:15,166 --> 00:31:18,693
Some composers are really
fully developed in their teens,

347
00:31:18,693 --> 00:31:20,250
like Mendelssohn,

348
00:31:20,250 --> 00:31:22,750
and others take a longer time.

349
00:31:25,001 --> 00:31:27,391
But Chopin when he is 19 or 20

350
00:31:27,391 --> 00:31:29,417
is at the full height of his creativity.

351
00:31:29,417 --> 00:31:31,061
We see that in his piano concertos

352
00:31:31,061 --> 00:31:35,326
or in such a simple piece
like this, Nocturne,

353
00:31:35,326 --> 00:31:39,577
which quotes a lot from
the second piano concerto.

354
00:31:39,577 --> 00:31:41,047
We don't know which came first,

355
00:31:41,047 --> 00:31:42,716
the nocturne or the piano concerto,

356
00:31:42,716 --> 00:31:46,723
but they in any case refer to each other.

357
00:31:46,723 --> 00:31:50,640
The expression is so clear and so round

358
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:51,890
and so intense.

359
00:31:55,705 --> 00:31:59,959
The nocturne starts with a simple cadence.

360
00:32:07,817 --> 00:32:09,067
Being repeated.

361
00:32:18,177 --> 00:32:21,265
And then we've got this simple tune

362
00:32:21,265 --> 00:32:24,015
over a very simple accompaniment.

363
00:32:56,807 --> 00:32:58,186
And that's basically it,

364
00:32:58,186 --> 00:33:02,677
and then the tune, it's
getting more elaborated,

365
00:33:02,677 --> 00:33:05,594
there's this three-way part in the middle.

366
00:33:05,594 --> 00:33:06,511
It returns,

367
00:33:09,142 --> 00:33:11,443
makes quite a heartbreaking turn

368
00:33:11,443 --> 00:33:14,788
in terms of the melodic development,

369
00:33:14,788 --> 00:33:17,371
and then ends in C-sharp major,

370
00:33:20,395 --> 00:33:23,395
which is really a heartbreaking turn

371
00:33:24,404 --> 00:33:26,854
after this slightly,

372
00:33:26,854 --> 00:33:30,021
C-sharp minor is a quite icy tonality,

373
00:33:32,348 --> 00:33:33,820
and I really feel sometimes

374
00:33:33,820 --> 00:33:36,487
that your heart is being frozen.

375
00:33:38,632 --> 00:33:42,299
There's sadness, very
touching, very moving,

376
00:33:43,734 --> 00:33:46,984
but altogether the sense of melancholy.

377
00:33:48,548 --> 00:33:51,284
Here it still seems like
it's all going to end

378
00:33:51,284 --> 00:33:54,701
without much hope, and then he does this.

379
00:34:09,898 --> 00:34:13,938
And what if this is an
outlook into a better world

380
00:34:13,938 --> 00:34:15,021
or some hope?

381
00:34:32,142 --> 00:34:34,145
- In October, 1830,

382
00:34:34,145 --> 00:34:37,645
Chopin performed his other piano concerto.

383
00:34:55,215 --> 00:34:57,719
- The E minor concerto is, yes,

384
00:34:57,719 --> 00:34:59,241
it is very difficult to play.

385
00:34:59,241 --> 00:35:02,363
In its own way it has its own challenges.

386
00:35:02,363 --> 00:35:04,315
Technically it is very difficult

387
00:35:04,315 --> 00:35:07,464
to manage all that fingerwork.

388
00:35:07,464 --> 00:35:10,323
The passagework is not so natural.

389
00:35:10,323 --> 00:35:11,952
I think Chopin's hand must have been

390
00:35:11,952 --> 00:35:14,469
really quite extraordinary,

391
00:35:14,469 --> 00:35:16,623
and in some ways the F minor concerto's

392
00:35:16,623 --> 00:35:19,751
even more awkward in
some of its placement,

393
00:35:19,751 --> 00:35:22,898
although it does suit
these old instruments.

394
00:35:22,898 --> 00:35:26,794
The notes seem to just glide more easily

395
00:35:26,794 --> 00:35:28,048
when you're playing on an instrument

396
00:35:28,048 --> 00:35:30,014
that has a lighter touch

397
00:35:30,014 --> 00:35:33,097
and more shallow depth on the action.

398
00:35:39,448 --> 00:35:41,527
I think the greatest
challenge in the concerto

399
00:35:41,527 --> 00:35:45,070
is to be able to find
that beautiful balance

400
00:35:45,070 --> 00:35:49,399
of lyricism and virtuosity
at the same time,

401
00:35:49,399 --> 00:35:51,615
and this kind of subtle,

402
00:35:51,615 --> 00:35:54,017
it has a rather classical base,

403
00:35:54,017 --> 00:35:57,350
but at the same it just breathes Poland,

404
00:35:58,371 --> 00:36:00,704
and that's a real challenge.

405
00:36:11,110 --> 00:36:13,880
The challenge isn't to play Chopin or not,

406
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:17,078
so much the technical
challenge is in the idea,

407
00:36:17,078 --> 00:36:19,652
in the rubato for instance,

408
00:36:19,652 --> 00:36:21,985
in the quality of the sound,

409
00:36:23,423 --> 00:36:28,198
and in that spontaneous
improvisational quality.

410
00:36:28,198 --> 00:36:30,110
For me that's the most difficult,

411
00:36:30,110 --> 00:36:33,178
to play the music as if
it's not been studied,

412
00:36:33,178 --> 00:36:35,854
as if it's your own piece of music

413
00:36:35,854 --> 00:36:38,214
that you've just written at that moment

414
00:36:38,214 --> 00:36:42,334
and it's just coming out of
your heart at that moment.

415
00:36:42,334 --> 00:36:44,167
That's very difficult.

416
00:37:13,807 --> 00:37:16,333
- As pianists we might be tempted

417
00:37:16,333 --> 00:37:20,166
to go at it with full
force on a modern piano,

418
00:37:21,258 --> 00:37:22,795
often with a marking fortissimo

419
00:37:22,795 --> 00:37:24,766
that would sound
something like this maybe.

420
00:37:32,038 --> 00:37:34,240
But I really firmly believe

421
00:37:34,240 --> 00:37:38,837
that often from what we know
how Chopin played the piano

422
00:37:38,837 --> 00:37:42,929
that it was never very
harsh or in your face

423
00:37:42,929 --> 00:37:45,346
but quite noble in the sound,

424
00:37:48,097 --> 00:37:52,320
that this has more
inner drama and tragedy,

425
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:55,765
and for me it would more sound like this.

426
00:38:03,068 --> 00:38:05,735
So much more inwardly turbulent.

427
00:38:17,270 --> 00:38:20,527
- Chopin's debt to opera was enormous.

428
00:38:20,527 --> 00:38:23,054
He encountered it not
only in the performances

429
00:38:23,054 --> 00:38:24,804
and scores of Mozart,

430
00:38:25,768 --> 00:38:30,294
but he heard a great deal of
opera growing up in Warsaw.

431
00:38:30,294 --> 00:38:34,461
Chopin actually was luckier
than his operatic colleagues

432
00:38:36,005 --> 00:38:39,212
in that the piano
doesn't run out of breath

433
00:38:39,212 --> 00:38:43,379
and he could sustain his lines
even longer than a singer.

434
00:38:44,399 --> 00:38:47,581
But nevertheless, he conceived those lines

435
00:38:47,581 --> 00:38:49,414
in terms of the voice,

436
00:38:50,387 --> 00:38:52,639
and even though the piano
doesn't have to breathe

437
00:38:52,639 --> 00:38:55,100
and he could spin these
things out over a long time

438
00:38:55,100 --> 00:38:57,373
but the singer couldn't,

439
00:38:57,373 --> 00:38:59,810
they are still modeled

440
00:38:59,810 --> 00:39:02,977
on the physicality of operatic melody,

441
00:39:04,376 --> 00:39:07,173
and therefore he allows his lines,

442
00:39:07,173 --> 00:39:10,506
which don't have to breathe, to breathe.

443
00:39:25,169 --> 00:39:28,330
- By 1830, Chopin had revealed

444
00:39:28,330 --> 00:39:30,421
he had fallen in love.

445
00:39:30,421 --> 00:39:34,248
Konstancja Gladkowska
was a talented soprano

446
00:39:34,248 --> 00:39:37,843
also studying at the music conservatory.

447
00:39:37,843 --> 00:39:41,339
Some believe she inspired
the slow romantic movements

448
00:39:41,339 --> 00:39:43,054
of both concertos.

449
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:01,182
- He realized he was a great virtuoso.

450
00:40:01,182 --> 00:40:03,695
In his writings he seemed to indicate

451
00:40:03,695 --> 00:40:07,528
that he certainly knew
what he was capable of,

452
00:40:08,387 --> 00:40:09,973
and at the same time I think

453
00:40:09,973 --> 00:40:12,212
he was rather naive in some ways.

454
00:40:12,212 --> 00:40:15,206
There is a kind of naivety that
comes through in his music,

455
00:40:15,206 --> 00:40:18,315
and he was also experiencing a wonderful

456
00:40:18,315 --> 00:40:21,339
kind of puppy love affair
with Konstancja Gladkowska

457
00:40:21,339 --> 00:40:24,228
that certainly is very
clear in the romance

458
00:40:24,228 --> 00:40:26,145
in the second movement.

459
00:40:40,210 --> 00:40:42,475
- You can't possibly
compose something like this

460
00:40:42,475 --> 00:40:44,308
if you're not in love.

461
00:40:47,437 --> 00:40:49,770
Or even something like this.

462
00:41:07,306 --> 00:41:11,972
You see, Chopin, I think
he could fall in love

463
00:41:11,972 --> 00:41:15,416
with Polish women at the drop of a hat,

464
00:41:15,416 --> 00:41:17,230
and as it turns out,

465
00:41:17,230 --> 00:41:18,949
these Polish women that
he fell in love with,

466
00:41:18,949 --> 00:41:20,590
they didn't quite want him.

467
00:41:20,590 --> 00:41:22,508
You know, he was diminutive, he was small,

468
00:41:22,508 --> 00:41:23,849
he was a little bit sickly.

469
00:41:23,849 --> 00:41:25,118
We have this idea that he was

470
00:41:25,118 --> 00:41:28,626
this wonderful, incredible
romantic figure,

471
00:41:28,626 --> 00:41:31,388
but the truth is the hunk
of the lot was Franz Liszt.

472
00:41:31,388 --> 00:41:33,053
The women were chasing him all the time,

473
00:41:33,053 --> 00:41:34,735
and Chopin wasn't showy that way,

474
00:41:34,735 --> 00:41:36,415
and besides the fact, you know,

475
00:41:36,415 --> 00:41:38,706
these were women whose
parents were involved

476
00:41:38,706 --> 00:41:40,194
in every aspect of their lives,

477
00:41:40,194 --> 00:41:41,884
and they didn't want them to be involved

478
00:41:41,884 --> 00:41:44,771
with this sickly young boy

479
00:41:44,771 --> 00:41:47,684
who you wouldn't know
what would happen to him

480
00:41:47,684 --> 00:41:49,497
in the upcoming years,

481
00:41:49,497 --> 00:41:53,701
and I think Chopin turned
that kind of torture

482
00:41:53,701 --> 00:41:56,965
into writing these absolutely perfect

483
00:41:56,965 --> 00:41:58,416
beautiful pieces of music

484
00:41:58,416 --> 00:42:00,856
that really sing to the soul.

485
00:43:11,900 --> 00:43:15,094
- Those concertos
were great successes,

486
00:43:15,094 --> 00:43:19,485
but the love he felt for
Konstancja was not returned.

487
00:43:19,485 --> 00:43:22,272
It was time to leave Warsaw.

488
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:40,316
On November 2nd, 1830, Chopin
headed south towards Austria,

489
00:43:40,316 --> 00:43:44,483
planning then to spend the
winter studying in Italy.

490
00:43:48,443 --> 00:43:52,299
- Dresden,
14th of November, 1830.

491
00:43:52,299 --> 00:43:55,496
Dear family, I have been
asked to appear in public,

492
00:43:55,496 --> 00:43:56,890
but I am deaf to it.

493
00:43:56,890 --> 00:43:58,391
I have no time to lose,

494
00:43:58,391 --> 00:44:01,217
and Dresden will give me
neither fame nor money.

495
00:44:01,217 --> 00:44:05,246
Yesterday I was at the Italian
opera, Rossini's Tancredi,

496
00:44:05,246 --> 00:44:06,614
but it was badly done,

497
00:44:06,614 --> 00:44:09,289
and also in church at a high mass today.

498
00:44:09,289 --> 00:44:10,681
I liked the voices,

499
00:44:10,681 --> 00:44:13,582
but the composition was nothing much.

500
00:44:13,582 --> 00:44:15,373
Except the art galleries,

501
00:44:15,373 --> 00:44:19,132
I have not looked at anything in Dresden.

502
00:44:19,132 --> 00:44:22,491
Prague, 21st of November, 1830.

503
00:44:22,491 --> 00:44:24,032
I met the Saxon princesses,

504
00:44:24,032 --> 00:44:26,135
the daughters of the former king.

505
00:44:26,135 --> 00:44:27,952
I played in their presence.

506
00:44:27,952 --> 00:44:31,049
They promised me letters
of introduction to Italy.

507
00:44:31,049 --> 00:44:33,524
Klengel gave me a letter for Vienna.

508
00:44:33,524 --> 00:44:37,570
He drank my health in champagne
at Mrs. Niesolowska's.

509
00:44:37,570 --> 00:44:40,487
She insisted on calling me Chopski.

510
00:44:55,945 --> 00:44:58,028
Vienna, 22nd of November.

511
00:44:59,252 --> 00:45:02,587
How glad I am to be here, that I am making

512
00:45:02,587 --> 00:45:06,120
so many interesting and
useful acquaintances,

513
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:09,120
that I may be going to fall in love.

514
00:45:13,763 --> 00:45:16,004
Vienna, 1st of December.

515
00:45:16,004 --> 00:45:17,569
The local papers have written a lot

516
00:45:17,569 --> 00:45:19,972
about my F-minor concerto,

517
00:45:19,972 --> 00:45:21,438
what exactly I don't know

518
00:45:21,438 --> 00:45:24,573
and have no curiosity to find out.

519
00:45:24,573 --> 00:45:29,224
I will give a concert, but
when, where, what I don't know.

520
00:45:29,224 --> 00:45:31,152
There are so many good pianists here

521
00:45:31,152 --> 00:45:34,957
that one needs a great
reputation to gain anything.

522
00:45:34,957 --> 00:45:39,124
During this week I have heard
three entirely new operas.

523
00:45:40,643 --> 00:45:42,976
Vienna, Christmas Day, 1830.

524
00:45:43,853 --> 00:45:46,177
Yesterday it was Christmas Eve.

525
00:45:46,177 --> 00:45:49,602
At midnight I went by
myself to St. Stephen's.

526
00:45:49,602 --> 00:45:52,758
When I entered there was no one there.

527
00:45:52,758 --> 00:45:54,525
I can't describe the greatness,

528
00:45:54,525 --> 00:45:57,679
the magnificence of those huge arches.

529
00:45:57,679 --> 00:46:01,572
It was quiet, a mournful
harmony all around.

530
00:46:01,572 --> 00:46:05,488
I never felt my loneliness so clearly.

531
00:46:05,488 --> 00:46:07,865
Let me describe to you my life here.

532
00:46:07,865 --> 00:46:11,323
I am on the fourth floor, it's
true it's in the best street.

533
00:46:11,323 --> 00:46:13,812
My room is big and comfortable.

534
00:46:13,812 --> 00:46:17,694
In the morning I am woken by
an insufferably stupid servant.

535
00:46:17,694 --> 00:46:20,045
I get up, they bring me coffee, I play,

536
00:46:20,045 --> 00:46:21,476
then have a cold breakfast.

537
00:46:21,476 --> 00:46:23,441
About nine comes my German tutor.

538
00:46:23,441 --> 00:46:25,218
After that I play again.

539
00:46:25,218 --> 00:46:27,558
All this in a dressing gown till 12.

540
00:46:27,558 --> 00:46:31,033
Then a walk, lunch, black
coffee in the best cafe house.

541
00:46:31,033 --> 00:46:33,293
I pay visits, return home at dusk,

542
00:46:33,293 --> 00:46:36,365
curl my hair, change my shoes,
and go out for the evening.

543
00:46:36,365 --> 00:46:40,532
About 10, 11, or sometimes
12, never later, I come back,

544
00:46:41,613 --> 00:46:44,113
play, weep, read, look, laugh,

545
00:46:45,295 --> 00:46:49,462
go to bed, put the light out,
and always dream of home.

546
00:47:06,393 --> 00:47:09,667
- Chopin hadn't
planned to leave Poland forever,

547
00:47:09,667 --> 00:47:11,565
but at the end of 1830,

548
00:47:11,565 --> 00:47:14,191
news reached of him of
the November Uprising

549
00:47:14,191 --> 00:47:16,308
against Russian rule.

550
00:47:16,308 --> 00:47:18,631
Chopin was persuaded that he physically

551
00:47:18,631 --> 00:47:20,648
could be of no help in Warsaw,

552
00:47:20,648 --> 00:47:23,648
and, frustrated, remained in Vienna.

553
00:47:25,499 --> 00:47:28,999
- Chopin had in him a tremendous violence,

554
00:47:31,944 --> 00:47:33,527
a tremendous anger.

555
00:47:34,517 --> 00:47:36,508
When he was marooned

556
00:47:36,508 --> 00:47:39,234
and he heard of the
Russian crushing of Warsaw

557
00:47:39,234 --> 00:47:41,192
and realized that he couldn't go back,

558
00:47:41,192 --> 00:47:45,025
he was driven almost to
the point of insanity.

559
00:47:46,474 --> 00:47:48,723
He didn't often scream in music,

560
00:47:48,723 --> 00:47:51,358
but when he did, my god, he did,

561
00:47:51,358 --> 00:47:56,273
and one of the works written
in the shadow of that invasion

562
00:47:56,273 --> 00:48:00,627
and his awareness of his
own exile at the age of 20

563
00:48:00,627 --> 00:48:02,840
is the B-minor scherzo.

564
00:48:07,106 --> 00:48:11,323
The very opening two chords
of that work are a scream.

565
00:48:11,323 --> 00:48:14,061
I don't think they should
be played beautifully.

566
00:48:14,061 --> 00:48:16,311
I think they should scream.

567
00:48:22,650 --> 00:48:27,092
This is a savage work and
it's an anguished work.

568
00:48:27,092 --> 00:48:31,259
I think here you find Chopin
unbuttoned, despairing.

569
00:48:33,605 --> 00:48:37,973
Though there are moments
of enormous tenderness,

570
00:48:37,973 --> 00:48:42,748
they are tinged with an
almost unbearable nostalgia

571
00:48:42,748 --> 00:48:44,331
for what he's lost.

572
00:49:19,651 --> 00:49:23,074
- Chopin decided
he'd had enough of Vienna.

573
00:49:23,074 --> 00:49:26,556
The place to establish his
credentials as a composer

574
00:49:26,556 --> 00:49:27,389
was Paris.

575
00:49:30,401 --> 00:49:33,901
In September, 1831, Chopin first set sight

576
00:49:34,890 --> 00:49:39,417
on the city that would be
home for the rest of his life.

577
00:49:39,417 --> 00:49:42,170
- Paris was well-known
as the cultural capital

578
00:49:42,170 --> 00:49:43,733
of the whole of Europe,

579
00:49:43,733 --> 00:49:46,424
and as such it was the place

580
00:49:46,424 --> 00:49:50,591
that most composers,
particularly operatic composers,

581
00:49:51,621 --> 00:49:55,392
and many performers felt they
needed to make a success.

582
00:49:55,392 --> 00:49:57,692
Chopin arrived there in 1831

583
00:49:57,692 --> 00:50:00,381
and very quickly you
can see from his letters

584
00:50:00,381 --> 00:50:04,202
how excited he is by some
of the musical culture.

585
00:50:04,202 --> 00:50:06,125
- I
arrived here fairly comfortably,

586
00:50:06,125 --> 00:50:10,217
though expensively, and I'm
glad that I am remaining here.

587
00:50:10,217 --> 00:50:12,967
Here one has the best
musicians in the world

588
00:50:12,967 --> 00:50:15,216
and the best opera in the world,

589
00:50:15,216 --> 00:50:19,495
and I am gradually launching
myself in this world.

590
00:50:19,495 --> 00:50:23,379
There is the utmost luxury,
the utmost swinishness,

591
00:50:23,379 --> 00:50:26,438
the utmost virtue, the utmost ostentation,

592
00:50:26,438 --> 00:50:29,436
at every step warnings
of venereal disease,

593
00:50:29,436 --> 00:50:31,676
shouting, racket, and bustle,

594
00:50:31,676 --> 00:50:34,535
and more mud than it
is possible to imagine.

595
00:50:34,535 --> 00:50:37,202
One can perish in this paradise.

596
00:50:38,070 --> 00:50:42,397
I am on the fifth floor at
Boulevard Poissoniere, number 27.

597
00:50:42,397 --> 00:50:46,103
You wouldn't believe what
a delightful lodging.

598
00:50:46,103 --> 00:50:49,589
I have a little room beautifully
furnished with mahogany

599
00:50:49,589 --> 00:50:51,578
and a balcony over the boulevard

600
00:50:51,578 --> 00:50:55,319
from which I can see from
Montmartre to the Pantheon.

601
00:50:55,319 --> 00:50:59,069
Many persons envy me my
view, none my stairs.

602
00:51:01,850 --> 00:51:04,350
Paris, 14th of December, 1831.

603
00:51:05,384 --> 00:51:08,509
Dear Mr. Elsner, I must
think of clearing a path

604
00:51:08,509 --> 00:51:10,980
for myself in the world as a pianist.

605
00:51:10,980 --> 00:51:13,941
To be a great composer one
must have enormous knowledge

606
00:51:13,941 --> 00:51:15,832
which, as you have taught me,

607
00:51:15,832 --> 00:51:18,171
demands not only listening
to the work of others

608
00:51:18,171 --> 00:51:21,045
but still more listening to one's own.

609
00:51:21,045 --> 00:51:22,959
Over a dozen able young men,

610
00:51:22,959 --> 00:51:24,776
pupils of a Paris conservatoire,

611
00:51:24,776 --> 00:51:27,349
are waiting with folded
hands for the performance

612
00:51:27,349 --> 00:51:30,797
of their operas, symphonies, and cantatas.

613
00:51:30,797 --> 00:51:32,612
There is an amazing collection here

614
00:51:32,612 --> 00:51:37,281
of interesting musical
folk of every description.

615
00:51:37,281 --> 00:51:39,286
- The period of the 1830s and '40s

616
00:51:39,286 --> 00:51:41,184
when Chopin was in Paris is in a way

617
00:51:41,184 --> 00:51:43,933
a time of relative stability.

618
00:51:43,933 --> 00:51:46,358
In terms of the aristocracy though,

619
00:51:46,358 --> 00:51:49,282
the old aristocracy are generally living

620
00:51:49,282 --> 00:51:52,517
on the Left Bank in
villas in Saint Germain.

621
00:51:52,517 --> 00:51:55,250
They have become more or less irrelevant,

622
00:51:55,250 --> 00:51:57,015
are sort of fading from the scene,

623
00:51:57,015 --> 00:52:00,036
but there's a new aristocracy
who are incredibly important

624
00:52:00,036 --> 00:52:01,802
to the success of the new regime.

625
00:52:01,802 --> 00:52:03,928
They're based largely on the Right Bank,

626
00:52:03,928 --> 00:52:05,948
which is also where the opera house was,

627
00:52:05,948 --> 00:52:07,560
it's where the Italian theater was,

628
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:10,037
it's where Chopin had his own apartments,

629
00:52:10,037 --> 00:52:13,396
and that new aristocracy is an aristocracy

630
00:52:13,396 --> 00:52:16,893
based partly on title
but partly on wealth,

631
00:52:16,893 --> 00:52:18,418
and some of those people,

632
00:52:18,418 --> 00:52:22,076
these are the aristocrats
familiar from Balzac's novels.

633
00:52:22,076 --> 00:52:24,281
They've made their money in
all sorts of different ways

634
00:52:24,281 --> 00:52:25,533
in the 18th century

635
00:52:25,533 --> 00:52:27,911
and are now happy to spend it,

636
00:52:27,911 --> 00:52:32,724
and one of the best ways to
signal your cultural class

637
00:52:32,724 --> 00:52:36,891
is to pay attention to the
arts and particularly to music.

638
00:52:38,507 --> 00:52:40,438
- Despite his love of opera,

639
00:52:40,438 --> 00:52:42,599
his appreciation of quartets,

640
00:52:42,599 --> 00:52:46,980
his prowess with concertos,
his awe of symphonies,

641
00:52:46,980 --> 00:52:49,404
Chopin decided to write sonatas

642
00:52:49,404 --> 00:52:53,885
for just one instrument
and just one performer.

643
00:52:53,885 --> 00:52:58,052
- Chopin was the most uniquely
pianistic of all composers,

644
00:53:00,010 --> 00:53:03,961
even though he never had a piano teacher.

645
00:53:03,961 --> 00:53:06,385
He thought in terms of the piano,

646
00:53:06,385 --> 00:53:08,452
he felt in terms of the piano,

647
00:53:08,452 --> 00:53:12,407
his aesthetic world was
conceived in terms of the piano.

648
00:53:12,407 --> 00:53:15,497
He was basically indifferent
to the orchestra.

649
00:53:15,497 --> 00:53:17,486
It's not that he didn't have the capacity

650
00:53:17,486 --> 00:53:19,105
to write well for it, of course he did.

651
00:53:19,105 --> 00:53:21,698
Look, we're talking about
one of the great geniuses

652
00:53:21,698 --> 00:53:22,971
in musical history.

653
00:53:22,971 --> 00:53:25,082
He just didn't care.

654
00:53:25,082 --> 00:53:26,163
- I think Chopin would have said

655
00:53:26,163 --> 00:53:28,309
in his delightful Polish accent,

656
00:53:28,309 --> 00:53:30,354
"You don't need anything but the piano.

657
00:53:30,354 --> 00:53:32,447
"The piano's absolutely
everything you need.

658
00:53:32,447 --> 00:53:35,123
"You do not need the headache of musicians

659
00:53:35,123 --> 00:53:36,998
"who are playing out of
tune in the orchestra,

660
00:53:36,998 --> 00:53:38,402
"and besides, if you treat the piano

661
00:53:38,402 --> 00:53:42,784
"like it is an instrument
with a soul and that it sings,

662
00:53:42,784 --> 00:53:43,977
"it will be wonderful,

663
00:53:43,977 --> 00:53:45,211
"and there's always question about

664
00:53:45,211 --> 00:53:48,878
"whether the orchestra
actually has a soul."

665
00:53:50,225 --> 00:53:53,112
I think Chopin knew that in the piano,

666
00:53:53,112 --> 00:53:55,338
he had everything he needed.

667
00:53:55,338 --> 00:53:58,171
- That said, to carve out a career

668
00:53:59,285 --> 00:54:02,995
as a virtuoso pianist
at this time in Paris

669
00:54:02,995 --> 00:54:05,296
would have been extraordinarily difficult,

670
00:54:05,296 --> 00:54:07,512
first of all, because you're up against

671
00:54:07,512 --> 00:54:09,237
all the other hundreds of pianists

672
00:54:09,237 --> 00:54:11,328
who were trying to do the same thing,

673
00:54:11,328 --> 00:54:16,298
but secondly because there
tends to be an element,

674
00:54:16,298 --> 00:54:19,657
and this is embodied always
by the figure of Liszt,

675
00:54:19,657 --> 00:54:21,787
there tends to be an
element of showmanship

676
00:54:21,787 --> 00:54:25,378
in how a pianist would present themselves

677
00:54:25,378 --> 00:54:27,195
so that a big enough audience

678
00:54:27,195 --> 00:54:29,310
was prepared to come and watch.

679
00:54:29,310 --> 00:54:33,993
- Paris at that time was
absolutely crawling with pianists,

680
00:54:33,993 --> 00:54:37,896
and of course the best of
them were very good indeed.

681
00:54:37,896 --> 00:54:40,832
Two names stood out above all others,

682
00:54:40,832 --> 00:54:44,863
and those two names were Liszt and Chopin,

683
00:54:44,863 --> 00:54:46,826
and they could hardly
have been more different.

684
00:54:46,826 --> 00:54:51,660
Chopin was almost desperately
afraid of appearing in public.

685
00:54:51,660 --> 00:54:56,338
He loathed it and he saw no
reason to court the public.

686
00:54:56,338 --> 00:55:01,091
Liszt lapped it up, Liszt
caused absolute hysteria

687
00:55:01,091 --> 00:55:03,915
in the audiences that he played for.

688
00:55:03,915 --> 00:55:06,332
Liszt thundered at the piano.

689
00:55:07,265 --> 00:55:10,861
He went three or four pianos
in a single recital sometimes.

690
00:55:10,861 --> 00:55:13,141
No piano of that time could withstand

691
00:55:13,141 --> 00:55:16,738
the power at this fire-breathing virtuoso.

692
00:55:28,031 --> 00:55:31,588
Chopin shunned this kind of thing.

693
00:55:31,588 --> 00:55:34,921
He could not bear coarseness in any way,

694
00:55:35,843 --> 00:55:39,277
and when it came to music, his very soul,

695
00:55:39,277 --> 00:55:43,581
the very idea of a coarse
sound was anathema to him,

696
00:55:43,581 --> 00:55:47,154
and this is one of the
great myths about Chopin,

697
00:55:47,154 --> 00:55:50,112
that he played relatively softly

698
00:55:50,112 --> 00:55:53,122
because he was always so weak and frail.

699
00:55:53,122 --> 00:55:54,778
This is not the case.

700
00:55:54,778 --> 00:55:58,945
He played within this relatively
constricted dynamic compass

701
00:56:00,766 --> 00:56:02,821
because on the pianos of his day,

702
00:56:02,821 --> 00:56:06,028
if you exceeded a certain
intensity of sound,

703
00:56:06,028 --> 00:56:10,045
a certain loudness, you lost
the control of the tone,

704
00:56:10,045 --> 00:56:11,974
and the result was something

705
00:56:11,974 --> 00:56:15,671
which could border on the
raucous, on the harsh.

706
00:56:15,671 --> 00:56:18,079
This Chopin could not abide.

707
00:56:18,079 --> 00:56:22,246
In many ways Chopin was
the most original composer

708
00:56:23,134 --> 00:56:24,934
in pianistic history.

709
00:56:24,934 --> 00:56:29,113
He found the most fruitful
and wonderful interplay

710
00:56:29,113 --> 00:56:32,446
between the piano's percussive character

711
00:56:33,533 --> 00:56:35,283
and its singing soul.

712
00:56:37,671 --> 00:56:41,838
In a sense, it was Chopin who
taught the piano how to sing.

713
00:56:45,217 --> 00:56:48,043
- I am confident that if
Chopin had stayed in Poland,

714
00:56:48,043 --> 00:56:49,134
he hadn't come to Paris,

715
00:56:49,134 --> 00:56:52,551
and he hadn't played the beautiful pianos

716
00:56:54,523 --> 00:56:56,356
built by Ignaz Pleyel,

717
00:56:57,369 --> 00:56:59,696
probably his music would
have sounded differently.

718
00:56:59,696 --> 00:57:04,448
I think it's the specific
qualities of the Pleyel pianos

719
00:57:04,448 --> 00:57:08,448
that fed his imagination,
fed his piano writing,

720
00:57:09,576 --> 00:57:13,743
and it's this symbiosis between
the piano and the composer

721
00:57:15,086 --> 00:57:18,399
that created this
incredible beautiful music,

722
00:57:18,399 --> 00:57:20,111
and I think without Chopin

723
00:57:20,111 --> 00:57:22,301
the Pleyel pianos wouldn't
have sounded so wonderful,

724
00:57:22,301 --> 00:57:23,727
and without the pianos,

725
00:57:23,727 --> 00:57:26,082
his music wouldn't have been what it was.

726
00:57:26,082 --> 00:57:29,077
- The instruments that he played on

727
00:57:29,077 --> 00:57:30,697
had a direct impact

728
00:57:30,697 --> 00:57:34,640
on the kind of music that he composed.

729
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:36,332
When he was in Warsaw,

730
00:57:36,332 --> 00:57:38,062
he was playing on Viennese instruments

731
00:57:38,062 --> 00:57:40,472
that had an extremely light action.

732
00:57:40,472 --> 00:57:42,639
You could play very quick,

733
00:57:43,716 --> 00:57:45,794
and of course that lends itself

734
00:57:45,794 --> 00:57:49,961
to music that has a lot of
virtuoso, acrobatic passages,

735
00:57:51,324 --> 00:57:53,624
so you find that in a
lot of his concert music,

736
00:57:53,624 --> 00:57:56,767
lots of ornamentation,
lightness, quickness,

737
00:57:56,767 --> 00:57:58,187
that's typical.

738
00:57:58,187 --> 00:58:00,451
But when Chopin came to Paris,

739
00:58:00,451 --> 00:58:04,144
his music changed rather
radically just in a few years.

740
00:58:04,144 --> 00:58:06,394
I think he was writing music

741
00:58:06,394 --> 00:58:09,915
that dealt more with the
quality of the sound.

742
00:58:09,915 --> 00:58:12,079
A lot of his nocturnes are

743
00:58:12,079 --> 00:58:15,488
from the French period in his life.

744
00:58:15,488 --> 00:58:19,655
- The figure of 60,000 pianos
in Paris during the 1840s

745
00:58:20,736 --> 00:58:23,598
at a time when the city had a
population of around a million

746
00:58:23,598 --> 00:58:26,396
is a remarkable statistic.

747
00:58:26,396 --> 00:58:30,016
It's not entirely clear how
the statistic was reached.

748
00:58:30,016 --> 00:58:34,931
It's quoted in an article in
1845 in a Parisian journal,

749
00:58:34,931 --> 00:58:37,348
and perhaps it overestimates,

750
00:58:38,651 --> 00:58:40,630
but probably not by that much,

751
00:58:40,630 --> 00:58:42,967
because we do also have
statistics of, for instance,

752
00:58:42,967 --> 00:58:46,384
how many factories there
were making pianos,

753
00:58:46,384 --> 00:58:48,947
and by the 1840s, by that same period,

754
00:58:48,947 --> 00:58:50,629
the second half of the 1840s,

755
00:58:50,629 --> 00:58:54,709
there was something like 180
piano manufacturers in Paris.

756
00:58:54,709 --> 00:58:56,821
So we're talking about an enormous growth

757
00:58:56,821 --> 00:59:00,455
in the production of pianos
and the sale of piano music

758
00:59:00,455 --> 00:59:03,889
and necessarily the number
of people who were playing.

759
00:59:03,889 --> 00:59:06,254
- And that's a lot of piano teachers.

760
00:59:06,254 --> 00:59:07,843
You know, when Chopin arrived at Paris,

761
00:59:07,843 --> 00:59:11,804
he said, "There are only two
types of pianists in Paris.

762
00:59:11,804 --> 00:59:14,351
"There are asses and there are virtuosi,

763
00:59:14,351 --> 00:59:15,433
"and most of the time

764
00:59:15,433 --> 00:59:18,281
"it's impossible to tell the difference."

765
00:59:18,281 --> 00:59:22,676
You have to think with all that
need for learning the piano,

766
00:59:22,676 --> 00:59:26,018
and here comes a perfect piano musician,

767
00:59:26,018 --> 00:59:28,406
he had a lot of students
that he could teach,

768
00:59:28,406 --> 00:59:31,107
and there's also the fact
that he began to play

769
00:59:31,107 --> 00:59:32,448
,

770
00:59:32,448 --> 00:59:35,151
and if he said in his Polish accent,

771
00:59:35,151 --> 00:59:36,926
"Once you play by the ambassador,

772
00:59:36,926 --> 00:59:40,025
"suddenly you have a
great much more talent."

773
00:59:40,025 --> 00:59:43,095
And because of it he
made his way into society

774
00:59:43,095 --> 00:59:44,365
and he became recognized

775
00:59:44,365 --> 00:59:46,392
and he dressed in the fashion,

776
00:59:46,392 --> 00:59:49,090
and so he was able to
begin to charge 20 francs,

777
00:59:49,090 --> 00:59:52,784
which at the time was a king's
ransom for piano lessons,

778
00:59:52,784 --> 00:59:56,261
and so he had all of fashionable
Paris studying with him,

779
00:59:56,261 --> 00:59:58,616
and it was really quite remarkable

780
00:59:58,616 --> 01:00:01,478
that he built his career in that way.

781
01:00:07,852 --> 01:00:11,335
Paris, Christmas Day, 1831.

782
01:00:11,335 --> 01:00:14,420
Dearest friend, I wish you were here.

783
01:00:14,420 --> 01:00:16,426
You know how easily I make acquaintances,

784
01:00:16,426 --> 01:00:17,854
how I like to gossip.

785
01:00:17,854 --> 01:00:20,551
Though I have no end to such acquaintance,

786
01:00:20,551 --> 01:00:23,732
not one with whom I can be sad.

787
01:00:23,732 --> 01:00:26,430
You would not believe
how I long for a pause,

788
01:00:26,430 --> 01:00:29,888
to have no one come near me all day long.

789
01:00:29,888 --> 01:00:32,698
I cannot bear to hear the doorbell.

790
01:00:32,698 --> 01:00:36,193
Some person in whiskers,
huge, tall, superb,

791
01:00:36,193 --> 01:00:38,520
comes in, sits down at the piano,

792
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:40,862
and improvises he doesn't know what,

793
01:00:40,862 --> 01:00:45,135
bangs and pounds without any
meaning, throws himself about,

794
01:00:45,135 --> 01:00:48,978
crosses his hands, clatters
on one key for five minutes

795
01:00:48,978 --> 01:00:53,070
with an enormous thumb that
once belonged in the Ukraine.

796
01:00:53,070 --> 01:00:54,906
My health is bad.

797
01:00:54,906 --> 01:00:56,587
I am happy on the outside,

798
01:00:56,587 --> 01:01:00,754
but inside something gnaws at
me, melancholy, indifference.

799
01:01:09,204 --> 01:01:12,188
I have been accepted into
the highest of society.

800
01:01:12,188 --> 01:01:15,225
I sit with ambassadors,
princes, ministers,

801
01:01:15,225 --> 01:01:16,840
and even don't know how it came about,

802
01:01:16,840 --> 01:01:18,659
because I did not try for it,

803
01:01:18,659 --> 01:01:21,717
but it is a most necessary thing.

804
01:01:21,717 --> 01:01:23,273
You are considered a bigger talent

805
01:01:23,273 --> 01:01:26,356
if you have been heard at the
English or Austrian embassy,

806
01:01:26,356 --> 01:01:30,774
yet I know how much I still
lack to reach perfection.

807
01:01:30,774 --> 01:01:33,160
I have five lessons to give today.

808
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:35,239
You think I am making a fortune?

809
01:01:35,239 --> 01:01:37,625
Carriages and white gloves cost more,

810
01:01:37,625 --> 01:01:42,427
and without them, one
would not be in good taste.

811
01:01:42,427 --> 01:01:45,312
- It always stuck in Chopin's craw

812
01:01:45,312 --> 01:01:48,062
that he was born on the
farm in Zelazowa Wola,

813
01:01:48,062 --> 01:01:49,455
because I think Chopin really believed

814
01:01:49,455 --> 01:01:52,876
that anybody who had this
absolutely natural ability

815
01:01:52,876 --> 01:01:54,516
at the piano was somebody

816
01:01:54,516 --> 01:01:57,862
who had the divine right
of being born royal,

817
01:01:57,862 --> 01:01:59,814
and because he wasn't,

818
01:01:59,814 --> 01:02:02,629
when he got to Paris and
he started to be accepted

819
01:02:02,629 --> 01:02:05,265
among ambassadors and play in such places,

820
01:02:05,265 --> 01:02:07,840
he had to dress with unbelievable finery,

821
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:10,169
have a beautiful coat, elegant gloves.

822
01:02:10,169 --> 01:02:12,100
He had to have an apartment
on the right street

823
01:02:12,100 --> 01:02:13,740
facing the right way,

824
01:02:13,740 --> 01:02:16,233
and of course because of this
he was always out of money,

825
01:02:16,233 --> 01:02:17,721
so he would write home to his father

826
01:02:17,721 --> 01:02:19,667
and his father would
write back angry letters,

827
01:02:19,667 --> 01:02:21,803
"Why don't you save
money for a rainy day?"

828
01:02:21,803 --> 01:02:23,791
Well, he couldn't save
money for a rainy day,

829
01:02:23,791 --> 01:02:26,902
because he somehow had
to keep up appearances

830
01:02:26,902 --> 01:02:29,053
so that he could fit into society.

831
01:02:32,151 --> 01:02:34,864
- Chopin reveled
in the company of artists

832
01:02:34,864 --> 01:02:37,173
and became acquainted with Berlioz,

833
01:02:37,173 --> 01:02:39,340
Hiller, Heine, and others.

834
01:02:40,178 --> 01:02:42,511
Schumann called him a genius.

835
01:02:42,511 --> 01:02:46,678
A debut concert in February,
1832 was a great success.

836
01:02:47,738 --> 01:02:50,496
His music was extensively published.

837
01:02:50,496 --> 01:02:52,550
After only a handful of years,

838
01:02:52,550 --> 01:02:54,899
Chopin had become firmly established

839
01:02:54,899 --> 01:02:57,986
in the Paris musical hierarchy,

840
01:02:57,986 --> 01:03:00,319
but he was far from content.

841
01:03:02,823 --> 01:03:05,535
Though Chopin frequently wrote home,

842
01:03:05,535 --> 01:03:08,163
he knew he could not return.

843
01:03:08,163 --> 01:03:12,676
A successful career was only
achievable outside of Poland.

844
01:03:12,676 --> 01:03:15,301
He even became a French citizen.

845
01:03:15,301 --> 01:03:18,669
Nevertheless, the keenly
felt absence of family,

846
01:03:18,669 --> 01:03:21,419
friends, and country haunted him.

847
01:03:25,500 --> 01:03:27,016
- Despite the fact that Chopin's father

848
01:03:27,016 --> 01:03:28,796
was a French teacher,

849
01:03:28,796 --> 01:03:32,981
Chopin didn't speak French
properly, he never quite learned,

850
01:03:32,981 --> 01:03:35,379
and in fact when he came to Paris

851
01:03:35,379 --> 01:03:38,139
one would imagine that
Chopin was running around

852
01:03:38,139 --> 01:03:41,111
speaking a very perfect
and beautiful French,

853
01:03:41,111 --> 01:03:42,854
being the great,

854
01:03:42,854 --> 01:03:44,620
but in fact it was described

855
01:03:44,620 --> 01:03:47,384
how he actually pronounced
things in French.

856
01:03:47,384 --> 01:03:48,889
Instead of saying

857
01:03:48,889 --> 01:03:51,204
the way it would be said,

858
01:03:51,204 --> 01:03:53,879
the actual accent came out from him

859
01:03:53,879 --> 01:03:56,315
.

860
01:03:56,315 --> 01:03:58,568
You know, Chopin was very exotic,

861
01:03:58,568 --> 01:04:02,051
and he brought Poland
wherever he went with him.

862
01:04:02,051 --> 01:04:05,134
The fact is, Chopin was an immigrant.

863
01:04:14,596 --> 01:04:16,088
- He felt himself, I would say,

864
01:04:16,088 --> 01:04:18,189
very much a Polish composer.

865
01:04:18,189 --> 01:04:21,001
Otherwise he wouldn't have
written all these mazurkas,

866
01:04:21,001 --> 01:04:24,751
all these polonaises,
the Rondo a la mazurka,

867
01:04:26,863 --> 01:04:28,656
there's a lot of these titles

868
01:04:28,656 --> 01:04:31,906
that sort of reflect on his Polishness.

869
01:04:39,202 --> 01:04:40,397
- Take a mazurka, for instance.

870
01:04:40,397 --> 01:04:42,707
They said he was incredibly descriptive.

871
01:04:50,482 --> 01:04:53,006
He would probably say
in his Polish accent,

872
01:04:53,006 --> 01:04:55,343
"The rhythm of the
mazurka is very specific.

873
01:04:55,343 --> 01:04:58,790
"You must stop on the two
or the three of each bar."

874
01:04:58,790 --> 01:05:00,383
♫ One, two, three

875
01:05:00,383 --> 01:05:02,036
♫ One, two, three

876
01:05:02,036 --> 01:05:03,756
♫ One, two, three

877
01:05:03,756 --> 01:05:06,662
♫ One, two, three

878
01:05:06,662 --> 01:05:08,731
"This is the national
character of the dance.

879
01:05:08,731 --> 01:05:10,868
"It is somehow more peasant-like.

880
01:05:10,868 --> 01:05:13,940
"It brings us closer to the art."

881
01:05:13,940 --> 01:05:16,456
- The polonaises of Chopin have something

882
01:05:16,456 --> 01:05:19,114
terribly proud and Polish about it,

883
01:05:19,114 --> 01:05:23,186
and they never sound military,
they never sound fascistic.

884
01:05:23,186 --> 01:05:27,186
Maybe because Poland was
so afraid for centuries

885
01:05:28,333 --> 01:05:30,537
and centuries and centuries

886
01:05:30,537 --> 01:05:33,992
to be attacked either
by Russia or by Germany

887
01:05:33,992 --> 01:05:37,438
and therefore the
feeling of national pride

888
01:05:37,438 --> 01:05:39,592
is a very healthy feeling,

889
01:05:39,592 --> 01:05:44,540
but I think it is an integral
part of Chopin's music,

890
01:05:44,540 --> 01:05:46,957
this very, very proud nature,

891
01:05:48,583 --> 01:05:51,322
which in music is expressed

892
01:05:51,322 --> 01:05:54,800
through a very strong sense of rhythm.

893
01:07:39,137 --> 01:07:41,404
- In August, 1835,

894
01:07:41,404 --> 01:07:45,994
Chopin traveled to Bohemia
for a family reunion.

895
01:07:45,994 --> 01:07:48,714
- We are
happier than we can describe.

896
01:07:48,714 --> 01:07:51,961
We hug each other and hug
again, it's wonderful.

897
01:07:51,961 --> 01:07:54,139
How good God is to us.

898
01:07:54,139 --> 01:07:56,364
The same parents, just the same as ever,

899
01:07:56,364 --> 01:07:58,058
only a little older.

900
01:07:58,058 --> 01:08:01,338
We walk, I take my mummy
on my arm, we talk,

901
01:08:01,338 --> 01:08:03,369
we eat and drink together.

902
01:08:03,369 --> 01:08:05,452
I am happy, happy, happy.

903
01:08:09,126 --> 01:08:11,843
- In Dresden
en route back to Paris,

904
01:08:11,843 --> 01:08:15,760
he met old friends from
Warsaw, the Wodzinskis.

905
01:08:16,614 --> 01:08:19,947
Chopin sat for Maria Wodzinska, aged 16.

906
01:08:22,307 --> 01:08:24,171
They fell in love.

907
01:08:24,171 --> 01:08:27,493
He asked her to marry
him, and she accepted,

908
01:08:27,493 --> 01:08:29,320
but her father thought she could do better

909
01:08:29,320 --> 01:08:32,487
than a sickly pianist living in Paris.

910
01:08:52,585 --> 01:08:55,039
The wedding was not to be,

911
01:08:55,039 --> 01:08:57,152
and the letters he had received from her

912
01:08:57,152 --> 01:09:00,569
were placed in a bundle marked my sorrow.

913
01:10:22,378 --> 01:10:24,887
- I think one of the essential concepts

914
01:10:24,887 --> 01:10:27,554
of the romantic piano literature

915
01:10:28,794 --> 01:10:31,866
is the composer as a single person,

916
01:10:31,866 --> 01:10:33,471
a little bit as a suffering person,

917
01:10:33,471 --> 01:10:34,803
especially in the case of Chopin.

918
01:10:34,803 --> 01:10:39,042
It's not about the composer
writing music for others,

919
01:10:39,042 --> 01:10:42,125
it's the composer being sort of found

920
01:10:43,272 --> 01:10:45,559
in one of his most intimate moments

921
01:10:45,559 --> 01:10:48,783
sitting at the piano playing to himself,

922
01:10:48,783 --> 01:10:51,894
and you feel a little bit like intruders,

923
01:10:51,894 --> 01:10:54,169
we shouldn't be there listening to it.

924
01:10:54,169 --> 01:10:57,669
It's very personal, highly personal music.

925
01:12:07,067 --> 01:12:10,439
- The first ballade was
an incredible drama,

926
01:12:10,439 --> 01:12:15,421
and what a journey from this
invitation to a waltz is that.

927
01:12:29,050 --> 01:12:32,133
And we go through different episodes,

928
01:12:34,242 --> 01:12:36,006
and towards the end, this has become.

929
01:13:01,193 --> 01:13:05,360
And there comes the most crazy
episode in any piano piece,

930
01:13:06,668 --> 01:13:09,439
his coda with this ballade is, what is it,

931
01:13:09,439 --> 01:13:10,772
it's pure anger,

932
01:13:13,743 --> 01:13:15,429
incredible drama,

933
01:13:15,429 --> 01:13:17,762
and you just have to risk
it and go to the end.

934
01:13:17,762 --> 01:13:18,864
There's no way,

935
01:13:18,864 --> 01:13:22,781
and when people talk
about Chopin being pretty,

936
01:13:26,319 --> 01:13:28,013
I want to show them this piece,

937
01:13:28,013 --> 01:13:29,823
just the passage I played, this one.

938
01:13:33,597 --> 01:13:34,614
He writes in this chord,

939
01:13:34,614 --> 01:13:37,947
it should be played as loud as possible.

940
01:14:24,936 --> 01:14:26,822
- Life in Paris was, however,

941
01:14:26,822 --> 01:14:28,913
in many ways pleasant.

942
01:14:28,913 --> 01:14:32,582
Chopin composed, taught extremely well,

943
01:14:32,582 --> 01:14:35,655
mixed at length with Polish exiles,

944
01:14:35,655 --> 01:14:39,923
but above all he spent time
with musicians and artists.

945
01:14:39,923 --> 01:14:43,194
The painter Eugene Delacroix
became a good friend

946
01:14:43,194 --> 01:14:47,361
and was another that considered
Chopin's music sublime.

947
01:14:50,395 --> 01:14:55,347
In October, 1836, Chopin was
invited by Liszt's mistress

948
01:14:55,347 --> 01:14:58,669
to a party that changed his life.

949
01:14:58,669 --> 01:15:02,023
There he met the most
notorious woman in France,

950
01:15:02,023 --> 01:15:06,988
Aurore Dupin, who published
under the name George Sand.

951
01:15:06,988 --> 01:15:11,368
She had a reputation as an
outspoken, uncouth adulterer.

952
01:15:11,368 --> 01:15:14,368
Chopin was not, at first, impressed.

953
01:15:16,890 --> 01:15:21,403
This is Chopin at 28, painted
by his friend Delacroix,

954
01:15:21,403 --> 01:15:23,403
and this is George Sand.

955
01:15:24,489 --> 01:15:26,142
After Delacroix's death,

956
01:15:26,142 --> 01:15:30,198
the unfinished painting
was cut in two and sold.

957
01:15:30,198 --> 01:15:31,605
Had it been finished,

958
01:15:31,605 --> 01:15:33,347
it might have captured the moment

959
01:15:33,347 --> 01:15:35,847
when Chopin had fallen in love

960
01:15:36,832 --> 01:15:38,249
with George Sand.

961
01:15:47,891 --> 01:15:51,418
- George Sand is obviously
the most important woman

962
01:15:51,418 --> 01:15:52,729
in his life,

963
01:15:52,729 --> 01:15:57,009
the only one whose full-blown
affair is well-documented.

964
01:15:57,009 --> 01:16:00,827
They were the odd couple
to end all odd couples.

965
01:16:00,827 --> 01:16:04,327
Here was this very restrained, meticulous,

966
01:16:05,540 --> 01:16:09,540
fastidious, charming
gentleman, so well-dressed,

967
01:16:10,567 --> 01:16:15,218
so conventional as a man,
as conventional as a man

968
01:16:15,218 --> 01:16:17,631
as he was unconventional in his music,

969
01:16:17,631 --> 01:16:20,881
and on the other hand, he falls in love

970
01:16:21,872 --> 01:16:25,583
with the most scandalous
writer of her age.

971
01:16:25,583 --> 01:16:28,916
For a start, her pseudonym, George Sand,

972
01:16:30,778 --> 01:16:34,945
and she dressed as a man,
top hat and cigar included.

973
01:16:35,827 --> 01:16:38,652
So here is this outrageous woman

974
01:16:38,652 --> 01:16:42,800
who would never fall
shy of shocking anyone,

975
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:45,649
tranvestite, sharing her bed

976
01:16:45,649 --> 01:16:48,572
with this funny little elegant Pole.

977
01:16:48,572 --> 01:16:50,896
This was a very unusual liaison,

978
01:16:50,896 --> 01:16:53,920
but we have here a joining together

979
01:16:53,920 --> 01:16:55,920
for a significant period

980
01:16:56,916 --> 01:16:59,416
of two quite amazing creators.

981
01:18:14,960 --> 01:18:18,280
- In 1838,
the 28-year-old Chopin

982
01:18:18,280 --> 01:18:21,204
traveled with George Sand
and her two children,

983
01:18:21,204 --> 01:18:24,300
Solange and Maurice, to Majorca.

984
01:18:24,300 --> 01:18:28,467
They were in search of sun,
solitude, and clean air.

985
01:18:30,711 --> 01:18:34,652
Palma, 19th of November.

986
01:18:34,652 --> 01:18:37,937
I am among palms, cedars, cacti,

987
01:18:37,937 --> 01:18:41,520
olives, pomegranates,
a sky like turquoise,

988
01:18:42,470 --> 01:18:46,420
a sea like lapis lazuli,
mountains like emeralds,

989
01:18:46,420 --> 01:18:50,587
air like heaven, at night
guitars and singing for hours.

990
01:18:52,015 --> 01:18:54,182
My piano has not yet come.

991
01:18:58,959 --> 01:19:01,376
Palma, 3rd of December, 1838.

992
01:19:02,266 --> 01:19:05,717
I have been as sick as a
dog these last two weeks.

993
01:19:05,717 --> 01:19:08,763
I caught cold in spite
of 18 degrees of heat,

994
01:19:08,763 --> 01:19:11,346
roses, oranges, sharlyns, figs,

995
01:19:12,408 --> 01:19:15,553
and the three most famous
doctors of the island.

996
01:19:15,553 --> 01:19:17,647
One sniffed at what I spat up,

997
01:19:17,647 --> 01:19:19,909
the second tapped where I spat it from,

998
01:19:19,909 --> 01:19:22,894
the third poked about and
listened to how I spattled.

999
01:19:22,894 --> 01:19:26,258
One said I had died, the
second that I am dying,

1000
01:19:26,258 --> 01:19:28,508
the third that I shall die.

1001
01:19:29,619 --> 01:19:32,852
- Chopin
survived his diagnoses.

1002
01:19:32,852 --> 01:19:35,910
He enjoyed his time with
Sand and her children,

1003
01:19:35,910 --> 01:19:39,993
and once a piano arrived,
he composed feverishly.

1004
01:19:41,362 --> 01:19:44,445
- George Sand gave herself to Chopin.

1005
01:19:46,747 --> 01:19:51,390
George Sand made it possible
for Chopin to blossom

1006
01:19:51,390 --> 01:19:53,850
as he had never blossomed before.

1007
01:19:59,760 --> 01:20:01,448
- The weather worsened,

1008
01:20:01,448 --> 01:20:03,641
and so did Chopin's health.

1009
01:20:03,641 --> 01:20:06,414
His tuberculosis returned.

1010
01:20:06,414 --> 01:20:08,738
The locals feared his sickness

1011
01:20:08,738 --> 01:20:11,674
and were offended by
his strange companion.

1012
01:20:11,674 --> 01:20:14,098
They forced the couple
to move to the hills

1013
01:20:14,098 --> 01:20:17,991
and take bare rooms in
an abandoned monastery.

1014
01:20:17,991 --> 01:20:21,699
Eventually, public
antipathy and winter rain

1015
01:20:21,699 --> 01:20:24,366
forced them to leave the island.

1016
01:20:26,938 --> 01:20:31,312
Marseille, 17th of March, 1839.

1017
01:20:31,312 --> 01:20:35,077
The last mazurkas brought me
800 francs the first of Lent.

1018
01:20:35,077 --> 01:20:37,778
I would rather sell my
manuscripts for nothing,

1019
01:20:37,778 --> 01:20:41,879
as in the old days, than have
to bow and scrape to fools,

1020
01:20:41,879 --> 01:20:46,046
and I'd rather be humiliated
by one Jew than by three.

1021
01:20:47,351 --> 01:20:49,597
Marseille, 12th of April.

1022
01:20:49,597 --> 01:20:53,121
My angel is finishing
a new novel, Gabriel.

1023
01:20:53,121 --> 01:20:55,867
Today she is writing in bed all day.

1024
01:20:55,867 --> 01:21:00,034
You would love her even more
if you knew her as I know her.

1025
01:21:02,741 --> 01:21:04,856
- George Sand
owned a country house

1026
01:21:04,856 --> 01:21:08,415
in the village of Nohant
in central France.

1027
01:21:08,415 --> 01:21:11,477
For the next decade she
and Chopin would spend

1028
01:21:11,477 --> 01:21:13,560
almost every summer here.

1029
01:22:08,771 --> 01:22:11,197
- Nohant was paradise,

1030
01:22:11,197 --> 01:22:15,451
clean air, no money
worries, prepared meals,

1031
01:22:15,451 --> 01:22:17,118
peace, and solitude.

1032
01:22:18,646 --> 01:22:21,310
George Sand sometimes
wrote through the night,

1033
01:22:21,310 --> 01:22:23,011
sleeping all day.

1034
01:22:23,011 --> 01:22:25,501
Chopin, however, rose with the sun,

1035
01:22:25,501 --> 01:22:28,649
worked, walked with the children, napped,

1036
01:22:28,649 --> 01:22:32,316
and met George and
guests for dinner at six.

1037
01:22:34,500 --> 01:22:36,630
- We know a good deal about
how Chopin lived at Nohant

1038
01:22:36,630 --> 01:22:38,752
because of the letters he
wrote to both his family

1039
01:22:38,752 --> 01:22:40,396
and to his friends,

1040
01:22:40,396 --> 01:22:42,397
and those letters indicate
that he was involved

1041
01:22:42,397 --> 01:22:44,191
in every aspect of daily life.

1042
01:22:44,191 --> 01:22:46,043
He would go to market with the family,

1043
01:22:46,043 --> 01:22:47,758
he would take carriage rides,

1044
01:22:47,758 --> 01:22:49,141
he would visit friends,

1045
01:22:49,141 --> 01:22:51,281
he would have friends over for tea.

1046
01:22:51,281 --> 01:22:53,459
He was also involved in family politics.

1047
01:22:53,459 --> 01:22:56,145
You know, Madame Sand, she
was very close to Maurice,

1048
01:22:56,145 --> 01:22:59,040
she loved her son, but she was
not so fond of her daughter.

1049
01:22:59,040 --> 01:23:01,927
He then commented that there
was all this kind of tension

1050
01:23:01,927 --> 01:23:04,415
between them that would often go on,

1051
01:23:04,415 --> 01:23:07,670
that he felt that Madame
Sand was probably jealous

1052
01:23:07,670 --> 01:23:09,255
of her daughter,

1053
01:23:09,255 --> 01:23:11,864
but the fact remains that here was Chopin

1054
01:23:11,864 --> 01:23:15,222
living with the most famous
woman in all of France,

1055
01:23:15,222 --> 01:23:17,052
and we see from the letters

1056
01:23:17,052 --> 01:23:19,414
that even though he was
very polite at the table

1057
01:23:19,414 --> 01:23:20,783
and he was very quiet,

1058
01:23:20,783 --> 01:23:22,883
he had what to say about everyone.

1059
01:23:22,883 --> 01:23:26,541
He was highly opinionated
and often very funny

1060
01:23:26,541 --> 01:23:29,041
and very picante, so to speak.

1061
01:23:30,733 --> 01:23:33,347
However, it did stick in his craw

1062
01:23:33,347 --> 01:23:35,889
that he was not born royal,

1063
01:23:35,889 --> 01:23:38,312
so perhaps the next best thing for him

1064
01:23:38,312 --> 01:23:39,903
would be to be the partner

1065
01:23:39,903 --> 01:23:41,581
of the most famous woman in the country

1066
01:23:41,581 --> 01:23:42,840
that he lived in.

1067
01:23:42,840 --> 01:23:44,715
- He was shy, but he was very sociable.

1068
01:23:44,715 --> 01:23:47,254
He made friends easily,
he adored his friends

1069
01:23:47,254 --> 01:23:50,236
and they had a good time together.

1070
01:23:50,236 --> 01:23:52,736
He was also very entertaining.

1071
01:23:54,527 --> 01:23:56,728
He was a gifted caricaturist,

1072
01:23:56,728 --> 01:23:58,527
which not many people realize.

1073
01:23:58,527 --> 01:24:00,732
That gift of caricature

1074
01:24:00,732 --> 01:24:04,339
translated itself into impersonations

1075
01:24:04,339 --> 01:24:06,899
which had his friends in stitches.

1076
01:24:06,899 --> 01:24:09,647
He was enormously amusing,

1077
01:24:09,647 --> 01:24:10,865
and this is not something

1078
01:24:10,865 --> 01:24:13,519
that one tends to find in his music

1079
01:24:13,519 --> 01:24:14,747
is this sense of humor,

1080
01:24:14,747 --> 01:24:18,914
this really almost subversive,
mocking sense of humor.

1081
01:24:27,097 --> 01:24:28,703
- For sheer output,

1082
01:24:28,703 --> 01:24:30,371
Chopin's summers at Nohant are

1083
01:24:30,371 --> 01:24:33,454
the most productive days of his life.

1084
01:24:53,446 --> 01:24:56,566
- I really like this B-flat minor sonata.

1085
01:24:56,566 --> 01:25:00,233
It's an amazing journey
from the nervousness

1086
01:25:01,432 --> 01:25:03,265
of the first movement,

1087
01:25:15,798 --> 01:25:19,048
the slightly angry dance of the second,

1088
01:25:27,504 --> 01:25:30,004
that then leads into the quiet

1089
01:25:32,570 --> 01:25:36,235
and absolutely still
atmosphere of the funeral march

1090
01:25:36,235 --> 01:25:39,942
with an incredible outlook
into a different world

1091
01:25:39,942 --> 01:25:41,525
in the middle part,

1092
01:25:59,380 --> 01:26:02,297
and then the last movement,

1093
01:26:02,297 --> 01:26:06,844
which for me is just
like a big question mark,

1094
01:26:06,844 --> 01:26:08,844
how do you follow death?

1095
01:26:10,156 --> 01:26:12,156
And he writes this piece

1096
01:26:13,510 --> 01:26:15,677
that hardly has a tonality

1097
01:26:17,726 --> 01:26:20,143
and that it's just two voices

1098
01:26:24,556 --> 01:26:25,556
rumbling by.

1099
01:26:43,960 --> 01:26:46,437
Rubinstein apparently compared this one

1100
01:26:46,437 --> 01:26:48,520
to wind across the grave,

1101
01:26:52,331 --> 01:26:54,748
and I really like that image.

1102
01:26:55,877 --> 01:26:57,657
It's quite extreme, this sonata,

1103
01:26:57,657 --> 01:27:00,157
and a really great masterwork.

1104
01:28:19,207 --> 01:28:22,978
- I think what is remarkable
with Chopin is how

1105
01:28:22,978 --> 01:28:25,478
a character changes so rapidly

1106
01:28:27,383 --> 01:28:30,021
into something else emotionally.

1107
01:28:30,021 --> 01:28:33,079
I mean, it can seem idyllic

1108
01:28:33,079 --> 01:28:35,752
and then there is a moment of darkness.

1109
01:28:35,752 --> 01:28:40,134
This reminds us of Mozart,
how rapid it can turn.

1110
01:28:40,134 --> 01:28:41,813
Let's take the third ballade.

1111
01:28:55,018 --> 01:28:56,812
Suddenly there's sadness.

1112
01:29:04,561 --> 01:29:05,978
Quite passionate.

1113
01:29:14,027 --> 01:29:17,744
This incredible loneliness
suddenly, and then.

1114
01:29:21,549 --> 01:29:23,214
Again, trying to find its way.

1115
01:29:23,214 --> 01:29:25,029
I mean, these emotions,

1116
01:29:25,029 --> 01:29:28,114
these very, very deep and strong emotions,

1117
01:29:28,114 --> 01:29:30,705
so rapidly going from
one place to the other.

1118
01:29:30,705 --> 01:29:33,796
That's fascinating to me .

1119
01:29:33,796 --> 01:29:36,370
- When I was first introduced
to the music of Chopin

1120
01:29:36,370 --> 01:29:38,032
as a young child,

1121
01:29:38,032 --> 01:29:41,890
I followed the myth, like most people,

1122
01:29:41,890 --> 01:29:45,148
that Chopin was this
light, ethereal character

1123
01:29:45,148 --> 01:29:47,591
who somehow floated around some lawns

1124
01:29:47,591 --> 01:29:50,199
while ladies were fanning themselves

1125
01:29:50,199 --> 01:29:52,420
and eating bonbons and pastries

1126
01:29:52,420 --> 01:29:54,376
and he would just saunter
over to the keyboard

1127
01:29:54,376 --> 01:29:57,386
and lightly float some
beautiful melody out

1128
01:29:57,386 --> 01:29:58,889
with an ethereal harmony,

1129
01:29:58,889 --> 01:30:01,415
but as I came to understand
Chopin's music more

1130
01:30:01,415 --> 01:30:04,177
and certainly Chopin the
man through his own letters

1131
01:30:04,177 --> 01:30:06,256
and also the letters of his students,

1132
01:30:06,256 --> 01:30:08,702
I began to understand that here was a man

1133
01:30:08,702 --> 01:30:10,110
with fire in his soul,

1134
01:30:10,110 --> 01:30:14,192
this was a man who had
very deep convictions

1135
01:30:14,192 --> 01:30:16,041
and a man who wasn't afraid

1136
01:30:16,041 --> 01:30:19,103
to express those convictions in his music,

1137
01:30:19,103 --> 01:30:21,106
and I think it is very important

1138
01:30:21,106 --> 01:30:25,125
not to pretend that his
music is sort of just light,

1139
01:30:25,125 --> 01:30:27,536
salon accompaniment while people dine

1140
01:30:27,536 --> 01:30:29,512
or chat or have tea,

1141
01:30:29,512 --> 01:30:32,975
that in fact there's a great
deal of fire and passion in it,

1142
01:30:32,975 --> 01:30:34,776
and what I came to understand

1143
01:30:34,776 --> 01:30:39,143
is that Chopin is a man who
had very strong opinions

1144
01:30:39,143 --> 01:30:41,976
and he let people know about them.

1145
01:30:43,694 --> 01:30:46,349
Dear long-suffering friend,

1146
01:30:46,349 --> 01:30:48,460
please move the furniture
to my new apartment

1147
01:30:48,460 --> 01:30:49,702
in rue Pigalle.

1148
01:30:49,702 --> 01:30:54,032
Take care with the crockery
in the drawing room.

1149
01:30:54,032 --> 01:30:57,778
The little sofas are shabby,
so please use the covers.

1150
01:30:57,778 --> 01:30:59,225
I'll need a new valet,

1151
01:30:59,225 --> 01:31:00,487
someone who won't be quarrelsome

1152
01:31:00,487 --> 01:31:03,117
and upset Madame Sand's country circles.

1153
01:31:03,117 --> 01:31:05,773
Don't forget to give
the porter instructions

1154
01:31:05,773 --> 01:31:10,068
that people and letters should
be sent on to rue Pigalle.

1155
01:31:10,068 --> 01:31:14,392
Now about Wessel, he's
a windbag and a cheat.

1156
01:31:14,392 --> 01:31:16,967
Tell him I have no intention
of giving my rights

1157
01:31:16,967 --> 01:31:18,797
over the Tarantella.

1158
01:31:18,797 --> 01:31:21,421
Also have fires in the
fireplace for two or three days

1159
01:31:21,421 --> 01:31:25,251
before we arrive so it's not
cold, dusty, smelly, or damp.

1160
01:31:25,251 --> 01:31:27,224
Oh, and go to the hatmaker Dupont

1161
01:31:27,224 --> 01:31:30,391
and have him make me a hat for Monday.

1162
01:31:31,540 --> 01:31:33,830
- To Chopin,
everything had to be beautiful,

1163
01:31:33,830 --> 01:31:36,405
and George Sand said of him, she said,

1164
01:31:36,405 --> 01:31:38,001
"He's not of this earth.

1165
01:31:38,001 --> 01:31:41,294
"There is something just
too angelic about him,

1166
01:31:41,294 --> 01:31:43,484
"his soul, his approach to music."

1167
01:31:43,484 --> 01:31:45,810
There is such a delicacy about Chopin

1168
01:31:45,810 --> 01:31:48,968
that bleeds into absolutely
everything he did,

1169
01:31:48,968 --> 01:31:51,870
so to be that kind of person

1170
01:31:51,870 --> 01:31:56,594
and to be embroiled in a
relationship with George Sand

1171
01:31:56,594 --> 01:31:58,744
fighting and screaming and yelling

1172
01:31:58,744 --> 01:32:01,256
and high emotions and low emotions,

1173
01:32:01,256 --> 01:32:03,582
this constant back and forth,

1174
01:32:03,582 --> 01:32:05,935
is really such a juxtaposition

1175
01:32:05,935 --> 01:32:10,102
in terms of who Chopin was
as a man and as an artist.

1176
01:32:15,863 --> 01:32:19,601
Nohant, September, 1841.

1177
01:32:19,601 --> 01:32:21,418
Let the publisher Masset have

1178
01:32:21,418 --> 01:32:24,894
the Allegro maestoso for 600 francs,

1179
01:32:24,894 --> 01:32:27,599
the Fantasie in F minor for 500,

1180
01:32:27,599 --> 01:32:30,760
and the C minor and
F-sharp minor nocturnes,

1181
01:32:30,760 --> 01:32:33,344
the ballade, and the
Polonaise in F-sharp minor

1182
01:32:33,344 --> 01:32:37,934
all for 300 francs each,
thus a total of 2,000,

1183
01:32:37,934 --> 01:32:39,267
for France only.

1184
01:32:48,560 --> 01:32:52,205
- The C-minor nocturne
and the fourth ballade

1185
01:32:52,205 --> 01:32:55,674
are probably his two darkest pieces,

1186
01:32:55,674 --> 01:32:57,228
and I have loved this music so much

1187
01:32:57,228 --> 01:33:00,525
since I was 11 and first heard this.

1188
01:33:00,525 --> 01:33:04,184
Chopin feels different,
Chopin is so enigmatic,

1189
01:33:04,184 --> 01:33:05,832
you know, there will be passages,

1190
01:33:05,832 --> 01:33:08,935
there are like improvisations in a salon

1191
01:33:08,935 --> 01:33:10,137
and in the next one,

1192
01:33:10,137 --> 01:33:14,378
there is a turn which is
so existential and so deep

1193
01:33:14,378 --> 01:33:18,246
and gives harmony which
is so full of suffering.

1194
01:33:18,246 --> 01:33:22,413
This music is really full
of suffering, unbelievable.

1195
01:33:24,239 --> 01:33:26,740
I find I have to step back sometimes

1196
01:33:26,740 --> 01:33:27,996
when I'm performing it

1197
01:33:27,996 --> 01:33:30,097
because I get too involved emotionally.

1198
01:33:30,097 --> 01:33:32,173
It can be dangerous, you know.

1199
01:33:32,173 --> 01:33:35,992
You're not a good actor if you
get too much into your role.

1200
01:33:35,992 --> 01:33:39,289
- I'm more a classical person
than a romantic person,

1201
01:33:39,289 --> 01:33:42,113
and I think that's the whole difference.

1202
01:33:42,113 --> 01:33:45,369
Sometimes if it's is
highly romantic music,

1203
01:33:45,369 --> 01:33:47,371
it gets for me a little bit too personal

1204
01:33:47,371 --> 01:33:49,072
and I just like a little distance

1205
01:33:49,072 --> 01:33:51,387
between myself and the composer.

1206
01:33:51,387 --> 01:33:53,470
I feel more at ease than,

1207
01:33:54,832 --> 01:33:57,579
I feel an intruder when
I play Chopin's music.

1208
01:33:57,579 --> 01:33:58,863
I think I shouldn't be there,

1209
01:33:58,863 --> 01:34:00,380
he should be sitting there
playing his own music.

1210
01:34:00,380 --> 01:34:03,218
It's not meant to be played by others.

1211
01:34:03,218 --> 01:34:05,631
It's too personal for me.

1212
01:34:13,502 --> 01:34:16,571
- I think Chopin just
wrote the music for himself

1213
01:34:16,571 --> 01:34:20,255
and maybe not even to be
heard by somebody else,

1214
01:34:20,255 --> 01:34:22,891
maybe by some very intimate friends,

1215
01:34:22,891 --> 01:34:25,092
George Sand, maybe Delacroix,

1216
01:34:25,092 --> 01:34:29,427
these people who were
part of his inner circle,

1217
01:34:29,427 --> 01:34:33,234
but I think he wasn't someone
who liked to sit onstage

1218
01:34:33,234 --> 01:34:36,742
and play in front of an enormous audience.

1219
01:34:36,742 --> 01:34:40,163
It was often too painful for
him and too embarrassing.

1220
01:34:40,163 --> 01:34:44,332
I think he was a very
shy and private person,

1221
01:34:44,332 --> 01:34:47,249
and you can hear that in the music.

1222
01:35:08,226 --> 01:35:10,924
- It's such a sensual
feeling to play his music.

1223
01:35:10,924 --> 01:35:12,843
You know, if you play like this waltz.

1224
01:35:28,572 --> 01:35:31,905
This is all about caressing the keyboard

1225
01:35:32,793 --> 01:35:34,457
and about the movement,

1226
01:35:34,457 --> 01:35:36,957
how the hand can tell a story.

1227
01:35:37,915 --> 01:35:40,752
It's unbelievably
well-written for the piano

1228
01:35:40,752 --> 01:35:43,835
and with an understanding of anatomy.

1229
01:35:46,596 --> 01:35:49,354
He was just a unique man.

1230
01:35:49,354 --> 01:35:53,925
- If you compare Chopin to
other romantic piano composers,

1231
01:35:53,925 --> 01:35:57,297
I think his music is extremely difficult.

1232
01:35:57,297 --> 01:35:59,299
It's virtuoso in a good sense.

1233
01:35:59,299 --> 01:36:03,299
I mean, it's not virtuosity
in order to show off

1234
01:36:04,675 --> 01:36:05,731
to your audience.

1235
01:36:05,731 --> 01:36:07,470
I think when Chopin wants to show off,

1236
01:36:07,470 --> 01:36:10,966
he does it in the very
quiet, very soft pieces

1237
01:36:10,966 --> 01:36:12,696
like the nocturne or the Berceuse.

1238
01:36:12,696 --> 01:36:16,253
It's showing off his
sort of velvety touch,

1239
01:36:16,253 --> 01:36:18,626
the way he can make a piano sound

1240
01:36:18,626 --> 01:36:21,393
that no other pianist could do.

1241
01:36:21,393 --> 01:36:26,073
I think that's much more
his look at or listen to me,

1242
01:36:26,073 --> 01:36:27,468
how soft I can play,

1243
01:36:27,468 --> 01:36:30,413
rather than listen to
me how fast I can play.

1244
01:36:30,413 --> 01:36:33,374
I think he wasn't bothered by virtuosity.

1245
01:36:33,374 --> 01:36:35,015
Sometimes when the music asks for it,

1246
01:36:35,015 --> 01:36:37,906
when it's a pure musical reason,

1247
01:36:37,906 --> 01:36:40,776
then he can write extremely difficult,

1248
01:36:40,776 --> 01:36:44,943
but it's never to show off,
it's just when it's needed.

1249
01:37:31,350 --> 01:37:34,087
- And then what happens is basically

1250
01:37:34,087 --> 01:37:35,890
it's quite a radical piece in a sense

1251
01:37:35,890 --> 01:37:38,628
because I don't know
if I know another piece

1252
01:37:38,628 --> 01:37:41,497
where sort of the bass
line stays really slow,

1253
01:37:41,497 --> 01:37:45,465
consequently the same,
up to nearly the end,

1254
01:37:45,465 --> 01:37:49,198
and it's all a variation
on that simple line,

1255
01:37:49,198 --> 01:37:51,338
actually technically quite demanding.

1256
01:37:51,338 --> 01:37:53,671
I find it quite hard to play

1257
01:37:55,626 --> 01:37:59,793
because he changes pattern
every two bars basically,

1258
01:38:00,688 --> 01:38:05,115
but the sentiment is
supposed to remain the same,

1259
01:38:05,115 --> 01:38:09,032
of this comforting sort
of dreaming away state.

1260
01:38:59,919 --> 01:39:02,919
The key thing is the singing quality

1261
01:39:06,138 --> 01:39:08,638
and the slight needles of pain

1262
01:39:12,010 --> 01:39:14,260
that are in the cantilenas,

1263
01:39:16,632 --> 01:39:21,195
and that we should really
always try to bring out,

1264
01:39:21,195 --> 01:39:24,630
and it's very hard to
find the tone quality

1265
01:39:24,630 --> 01:39:25,998
in the Berceuse for

1266
01:39:28,459 --> 01:39:32,376
of this melody as opposed
to the accompaniment.

1267
01:39:40,922 --> 01:39:44,625
How much light do we
add to the right hand,

1268
01:39:44,625 --> 01:39:48,792
as opposed to this gentle
rocking sound in the left hand,

1269
01:39:50,448 --> 01:39:52,838
and how much do we make it a line,

1270
01:39:52,838 --> 01:39:55,227
do we form it into a phrase,

1271
01:39:55,227 --> 01:39:58,348
how much do we let it simply happen?

1272
01:39:58,348 --> 01:40:02,377
Those are all the questions
that need to be decided

1273
01:40:02,377 --> 01:40:04,267
and it changes also every time.

1274
01:40:04,267 --> 01:40:08,860
That's also something that
I find very attractive

1275
01:40:08,860 --> 01:40:10,610
about Chopin's music.

1276
01:40:11,572 --> 01:40:13,821
There is a certain sense of improvisation.

1277
01:40:13,821 --> 01:40:15,003
It's written music,

1278
01:40:15,003 --> 01:40:19,170
but there's a sense of this
comes to me in the moment.

1279
01:40:20,969 --> 01:40:23,343
- Winters in
Paris were spent teaching,

1280
01:40:23,343 --> 01:40:28,116
socializing, composing,
but very rarely performing.

1281
01:40:28,116 --> 01:40:30,432
Publishing brought in extra money,

1282
01:40:30,432 --> 01:40:33,880
enough to dress well,
be transported in style,

1283
01:40:33,880 --> 01:40:36,713
to dine out, and live comfortably.

1284
01:40:38,134 --> 01:40:42,301
His relationship with George
Sand seemed comfortable too.

1285
01:40:43,516 --> 01:40:46,837
Dear George, how are you?

1286
01:40:46,837 --> 01:40:48,630
Here I am in Paris.

1287
01:40:48,630 --> 01:40:50,061
I have seen Delacroix.

1288
01:40:50,061 --> 01:40:51,897
We talked for 2 1/2 hours of music,

1289
01:40:51,897 --> 01:40:55,379
of painting, and especially of you.

1290
01:40:55,379 --> 01:40:57,617
Friday I shall be with you.

1291
01:40:57,617 --> 01:40:59,584
Here is a leaf from your garden.

1292
01:40:59,584 --> 01:41:02,545
I will say nothing more
except that I am well

1293
01:41:02,545 --> 01:41:05,628
and I am your most fossilized fossil.

1294
01:41:17,957 --> 01:41:20,207
Nohant, 20th of July, 1845.

1295
01:41:22,086 --> 01:41:25,753
Dear family, I was not
made for the country,

1296
01:41:27,009 --> 01:41:30,123
though fresh air is good for me.

1297
01:41:30,123 --> 01:41:34,238
I don't play much, as
my piano is out of tune.

1298
01:41:34,238 --> 01:41:36,643
I'm always with one foot among you,

1299
01:41:36,643 --> 01:41:37,919
with the other in the next room

1300
01:41:37,919 --> 01:41:40,657
where the lady of the house works.

1301
01:41:40,657 --> 01:41:42,576
I have written three new mazurkas,

1302
01:41:42,576 --> 01:41:45,826
which will probably come out in Berlin.

1303
01:41:52,143 --> 01:41:54,643
Nohant, 11th of October, 1846.

1304
01:41:56,420 --> 01:41:59,019
Dear family, no doubt you are

1305
01:41:59,019 --> 01:42:01,556
already back from your holiday.

1306
01:42:01,556 --> 01:42:05,189
Here we have had such a beautiful summer.

1307
01:42:05,189 --> 01:42:09,133
Yesterday the lady of the
house made jam from grapes.

1308
01:42:09,133 --> 01:42:10,786
The whole summer has been spent here

1309
01:42:10,786 --> 01:42:14,107
on various drives and excursions.

1310
01:42:14,107 --> 01:42:15,899
I was not that involved,

1311
01:42:15,899 --> 01:42:20,293
for these things tire me
more than they're worth.

1312
01:42:20,293 --> 01:42:22,534
I am so weary, so depressed

1313
01:42:22,534 --> 01:42:24,224
that it reacts on the mood of the others,

1314
01:42:24,224 --> 01:42:28,391
and the young folk enjoy
things better without me.

1315
01:42:30,930 --> 01:42:33,455
Among other news, you have probably heard

1316
01:42:33,455 --> 01:42:36,087
of Monsieur Le Verrier
of the Paris Observatory

1317
01:42:36,087 --> 01:42:38,838
and his discovery of a new planet.

1318
01:42:38,838 --> 01:42:40,714
What a triumph of science,

1319
01:42:40,714 --> 01:42:42,868
to be able to arrive at such a discovery

1320
01:42:42,868 --> 01:42:44,836
by means of calculation.

1321
01:42:44,836 --> 01:42:48,308
Its name is to be Le Verrier, or Janus,

1322
01:42:48,308 --> 01:42:51,342
though Le Verrier himself prefers Neptune.

1323
01:42:51,342 --> 01:42:53,095
I have new works.

1324
01:42:53,095 --> 01:42:55,295
I'm not sure they are
as good as in the past,

1325
01:42:55,295 --> 01:42:56,768
but time will tell.

1326
01:42:56,768 --> 01:42:59,297
When one does a thing it appears good.

1327
01:42:59,297 --> 01:43:01,540
Otherwise one would not write it.

1328
01:43:14,815 --> 01:43:16,398
Paris, April, 1847.

1329
01:43:18,089 --> 01:43:21,704
Dear family, Solange is
not to be married yet.

1330
01:43:21,704 --> 01:43:24,028
After they had arrived
here for the contract,

1331
01:43:24,028 --> 01:43:26,168
she changed her mind.

1332
01:43:26,168 --> 01:43:29,538
I am sorry about it and sorry for the boy.

1333
01:43:29,538 --> 01:43:31,739
You asked what I shall do this summer.

1334
01:43:31,739 --> 01:43:33,429
Just the same as always.

1335
01:43:33,429 --> 01:43:35,559
I shall go to Nohant as soon as it is warm

1336
01:43:35,559 --> 01:43:37,583
and meanwhile I shall stay here

1337
01:43:37,583 --> 01:43:39,750
and give a lot of lessons.

1338
01:43:45,964 --> 01:43:49,243
- In 1847, the
complicated relationship

1339
01:43:49,243 --> 01:43:52,395
with George Sand finally ended.

1340
01:43:52,395 --> 01:43:55,153
It had already turned platonic,

1341
01:43:55,153 --> 01:43:58,724
more nurse and patient than two lovers.

1342
01:43:58,724 --> 01:44:00,575
Tensions finally boiled over

1343
01:44:00,575 --> 01:44:05,253
when Chopin took the side of
Solange against her mother.

1344
01:44:05,253 --> 01:44:06,836
All contact ceased.

1345
01:44:15,189 --> 01:44:17,604
- Christmas, 1847.

1346
01:44:17,604 --> 01:44:21,110
Dear sister, George is a strange creature

1347
01:44:21,110 --> 01:44:22,952
for all her intellect.

1348
01:44:22,952 --> 01:44:26,758
She longs to find something
against those who care for her.

1349
01:44:26,758 --> 01:44:29,448
She will not come to Paris this winter.

1350
01:44:29,448 --> 01:44:33,365
What has been and no
longer is leaves no trace.

1351
01:44:38,364 --> 01:44:42,630
- 1848,
revolution rolled over Europe

1352
01:44:42,630 --> 01:44:45,047
and broke out in Paris.

1353
01:44:45,047 --> 01:44:47,969
Chopin accepted an offer
from a Scottish student,

1354
01:44:47,969 --> 01:44:50,582
Jane Stirling, to escape the bloodshed

1355
01:44:50,582 --> 01:44:52,798
and earn some much-needed money

1356
01:44:52,798 --> 01:44:56,048
by sailing to Britain to give concerts.

1357
01:45:04,312 --> 01:45:06,805
- 6th of May, 1848.

1358
01:45:06,805 --> 01:45:10,957
I am installed in the abyss
that is called London.

1359
01:45:10,957 --> 01:45:14,802
Erard was very courteous and
placed a piano at my disposal.

1360
01:45:14,802 --> 01:45:16,864
I have also one instrument of Broadwood

1361
01:45:16,864 --> 01:45:19,365
and one of Pleyel, three in a row,

1362
01:45:19,365 --> 01:45:20,609
but what is the use

1363
01:45:20,609 --> 01:45:22,513
when I have not the time to play on them.

1364
01:45:22,513 --> 01:45:24,331
I have innumerable visits to play

1365
01:45:24,331 --> 01:45:27,789
and my days flash past like lightning.

1366
01:45:27,789 --> 01:45:30,677
I have been asked to
play in the Philharmonic,

1367
01:45:30,677 --> 01:45:32,632
but don't want to play there.

1368
01:45:32,632 --> 01:45:34,610
The orchestra is like their roast beef

1369
01:45:34,610 --> 01:45:36,116
or their turtle soup,

1370
01:45:36,116 --> 01:45:39,776
excellent, strong, but nothing more.

1371
01:45:39,776 --> 01:45:43,609
There is only one rehearsal
and that's public.

1372
01:45:45,221 --> 01:45:48,036
- We know that in Chopin's
professional adult life

1373
01:45:48,036 --> 01:45:50,392
he only gave 30 concerts,

1374
01:45:50,392 --> 01:45:52,609
and most of those
concerts were for a public

1375
01:45:52,609 --> 01:45:54,359
of less than 300 people,

1376
01:45:54,359 --> 01:45:56,625
which would be something that
would be unheard of today.

1377
01:45:56,625 --> 01:45:58,702
That would be a small little concert,

1378
01:45:58,702 --> 01:46:02,261
but we also know that for a
good many of those concerts

1379
01:46:02,261 --> 01:46:05,314
George Sand and her friends had to buy up

1380
01:46:05,314 --> 01:46:06,514
a number of the tickets

1381
01:46:06,514 --> 01:46:08,733
and hand them out secretly to friends

1382
01:46:08,733 --> 01:46:11,251
because Chopin couldn't
fill a hall on his own.

1383
01:46:11,251 --> 01:46:13,281
He wasn't the kind of marquis name

1384
01:46:13,281 --> 01:46:16,603
that Franz Liszt was
or perhaps Kalkbrenner

1385
01:46:16,603 --> 01:46:18,219
or any of these other characters,

1386
01:46:18,219 --> 01:46:21,430
the asses and virtuosi
of Paris, as he said,

1387
01:46:21,430 --> 01:46:24,930
but he also didn't like to play in public.

1388
01:46:25,862 --> 01:46:28,584
He believed that the
only way to make real art

1389
01:46:28,584 --> 01:46:31,474
was to actually be in a salon
with four or five people,

1390
01:46:31,474 --> 01:46:35,785
each really listening and the
artist communing with God,

1391
01:46:35,785 --> 01:46:37,674
and that was the way to create art.

1392
01:46:37,674 --> 01:46:42,190
He said, "In a hall with
people in the front row,

1393
01:46:42,190 --> 01:46:45,151
"ugly monsters breathing at you

1394
01:46:45,151 --> 01:46:47,565
"as if they are going to eat you alive."

1395
01:46:47,565 --> 01:46:50,126
He said, "How can you
possibly make art that way?

1396
01:46:50,126 --> 01:46:51,626
"Simply not done."

1397
01:46:53,672 --> 01:46:58,315
London, 2nd of June, 1848.

1398
01:46:58,315 --> 01:47:01,879
If I could have a few days
without blood-spitting,

1399
01:47:01,879 --> 01:47:03,743
if I were younger,

1400
01:47:03,743 --> 01:47:06,743
I might be able to start life again.

1401
01:47:11,395 --> 01:47:12,978
London, July, 1848.

1402
01:47:14,705 --> 01:47:18,122
I am depressed, I can't find any comfort.

1403
01:47:19,071 --> 01:47:21,175
I have worn out all feeling.

1404
01:47:21,175 --> 01:47:24,842
I only vegetate and
wait for it to end soon.

1405
01:47:26,314 --> 01:47:27,397
August, 1848.

1406
01:47:28,791 --> 01:47:30,677
I left London a few days ago

1407
01:47:30,677 --> 01:47:33,452
and made the journey to
Edinburgh in 12 hours.

1408
01:47:33,452 --> 01:47:35,594
I have given two musical matinees

1409
01:47:35,594 --> 01:47:38,003
which people apparently enjoyed.

1410
01:47:38,003 --> 01:47:42,170
This doesn't prevent my
having been equally bored.

1411
01:47:45,418 --> 01:47:49,349
The population here is ugly
but apparently good-natured.

1412
01:47:49,349 --> 01:47:53,016
On the other hand, the
cows are magnificent.

1413
01:47:54,076 --> 01:47:56,659
Scotland, 1st of October, 1848.

1414
01:47:58,406 --> 01:48:02,584
Dear friend, until 2 p.m.
I am fit for nothing,

1415
01:48:02,584 --> 01:48:04,976
and then when I dress,
everything strains me,

1416
01:48:04,976 --> 01:48:07,836
and I gasp that way till dinnertime.

1417
01:48:07,836 --> 01:48:10,169
Afterwards one has to
sit two hours at table

1418
01:48:10,169 --> 01:48:12,502
with the men, look at them talking

1419
01:48:12,502 --> 01:48:14,236
and listen to them thinking.

1420
01:48:14,236 --> 01:48:16,477
I am bored to death.

1421
01:48:16,477 --> 01:48:19,866
Then my good Daniel
carries me up to my bedroom

1422
01:48:19,866 --> 01:48:22,783
and I am free to dream and breathe.

1423
01:48:25,204 --> 01:48:27,037
London, October, 1848.

1424
01:48:28,128 --> 01:48:30,740
I have been ill the last 18 days,

1425
01:48:30,740 --> 01:48:32,589
ever since I reached London.

1426
01:48:32,589 --> 01:48:35,339
I have not left the house at all.

1427
01:48:36,432 --> 01:48:39,829
I have had such a cold and such headaches,

1428
01:48:39,829 --> 01:48:43,026
short breath, and all my bad symptoms.

1429
01:48:43,026 --> 01:48:45,802
My head is very painful.

1430
01:48:45,802 --> 01:48:48,170
Why should God kill me this way,

1431
01:48:48,170 --> 01:48:50,920
not at once but little by little?

1432
01:48:52,878 --> 01:48:54,795
London, November, 1848.

1433
01:48:55,674 --> 01:48:58,130
Even if I could fall in love with someone,

1434
01:48:58,130 --> 01:49:01,612
as I should be glad to do,
still I would not marry.

1435
01:49:01,612 --> 01:49:04,467
We would have nothing to
eat and nowhere to live,

1436
01:49:04,467 --> 01:49:06,907
and a rich woman expects a rich man,

1437
01:49:06,907 --> 01:49:10,303
or if a poor man, at
least not a sickly one,

1438
01:49:10,303 --> 01:49:13,750
but one who is young and handsome.

1439
01:49:13,750 --> 01:49:16,750
Meanwhile what has become of my art?

1440
01:49:20,348 --> 01:49:23,457
- Chopin
returned to a calmer Paris.

1441
01:49:23,457 --> 01:49:26,257
The winter proved long and sickly.

1442
01:49:26,257 --> 01:49:30,090
Only the return of summer
could ease his pain.

1443
01:49:34,473 --> 01:49:37,954
Paris, 18th of June, 1849.

1444
01:49:37,954 --> 01:49:40,654
I am stronger, for I have been eating

1445
01:49:40,654 --> 01:49:42,840
and have dropped the medicine,

1446
01:49:42,840 --> 01:49:45,802
but I gasp and cough just the same,

1447
01:49:45,802 --> 01:49:47,635
only I bear it better.

1448
01:49:48,527 --> 01:49:50,814
I have not yet begun to play.

1449
01:49:50,814 --> 01:49:52,147
I can't compose.

1450
01:49:54,037 --> 01:49:55,120
22nd of June.

1451
01:49:56,537 --> 01:49:59,507
I had two hemorrhages last night.

1452
01:49:59,507 --> 01:50:01,007
I just spit blood.

1453
01:50:04,283 --> 01:50:05,783
17th of September.

1454
01:50:06,771 --> 01:50:09,686
I am not to travel but to take
a lodging with south windows

1455
01:50:09,686 --> 01:50:11,325
and stay in Paris.

1456
01:50:11,325 --> 01:50:12,447
After much searching,

1457
01:50:12,447 --> 01:50:13,987
one has been found for me at last,

1458
01:50:13,987 --> 01:50:16,556
very expensive, 'tis true,

1459
01:50:16,556 --> 01:50:19,189
Place Vendome number 12.

1460
01:50:19,189 --> 01:50:21,146
My sister, who has come from Poland,

1461
01:50:21,146 --> 01:50:22,772
will remain with me,

1462
01:50:22,772 --> 01:50:26,752
unless she shall be urgently
sent for to go home.

1463
01:50:26,752 --> 01:50:30,585
I am ready to faint from
fatigue and weakness.

1464
01:50:33,194 --> 01:50:37,240
As this next cough will no doubt kill me,

1465
01:50:37,240 --> 01:50:40,972
I implore you to have my body cut open

1466
01:50:40,972 --> 01:50:43,805
so that I may not be buried alive.

1467
01:50:46,261 --> 01:50:49,979
- On October the 17th, 1849,

1468
01:50:49,979 --> 01:50:51,729
Frederic Chopin died.

1469
01:50:53,599 --> 01:50:55,484
He was just 39.

1470
01:50:55,484 --> 01:50:59,651
)

1471
01:51:03,527 --> 01:51:08,066
His sister, Ludwika, was with
him, as were a few friends.

1472
01:51:08,066 --> 01:51:10,042
Solange was there.

1473
01:51:10,042 --> 01:51:11,709
George Sand was not.

1474
01:51:13,604 --> 01:51:16,600
A mass was held at the
Church of the Madeleine.

1475
01:51:16,600 --> 01:51:18,442
It's believed that Chopin requested

1476
01:51:18,442 --> 01:51:20,275
the requiem by Mozart.

1477
01:51:23,568 --> 01:51:27,412
A few days later, Ludwika
returned to Warsaw.

1478
01:51:27,412 --> 01:51:32,101
She carried a small urn that
contained her brother's heart.

1479
01:51:32,101 --> 01:51:35,011
It was placed in the
Church of the Holy Cross

1480
01:51:35,011 --> 01:51:37,499
within sight of the streets and apartments

1481
01:51:37,499 --> 01:51:41,666
where, as a child, he had
first taken up the piano.

1482
01:51:43,835 --> 01:51:46,918
For the Poles, he is a national hero.

1483
01:52:01,674 --> 01:52:05,841
For music, he is one of the
greatest composers of all time.