Original subtitles

Vienna, the 11th of August, 1829.

Vienna, the home of Hayden, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart.

Vienna, the home of opera,

opera such as Mozart's famous Don Giovanni.

On this summer's night in 1829,

a teenager, shy and sickly took to the stage

to play a variation of Mozart's melody.

Ladies and gentlemen, Frederic Chopin.

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

Frederic Chopin was born early in 1810.

His French father, Nicolas, came to Poland in 1787

when he was 16.

When revolution then swept France,

Nicolas stayed, married,

and taught French to aristocratic families.

Now he had a son.

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

to whom Chopin's mother Justyna was related.

But the year Frederic was born,

Nicolas was offered a position teaching French

at a leading secondary school in Warsaw.

Warsaw then was the capital of a minor state

on the fringes of Napoleon's empire.

For decades, it had been carved up by Russia,

Austria, and Prussia.

Now under Napoleon French language and culture reigned.

The Poles had thrown their lot in with Napoleon,

hoping for the reward of an independent state.

But Napoleon's downfall would see Poland

swallowed up by the Russian Empire.

Discontent was never far from the surface,

yet at the same time,

this was one of the great cities of Eastern Europe.

Warsaw was an artistically sophisticated city.

In 1817, Chopin's parents moved with Frederic

and his three sisters to an apartment

in a wing of the school where Nicolas taught.

To supplement his income,

Nicolas started a boarding house for students.

It was a very musical home.

Chopin was born to music.

His father himself said that he had never had

any trouble playing the piano.

It's very hard to understand

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

which is an extremely unnatural activity,

but he apparently was.

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

"never detained you for more than an hour."

For me, when it comes to Frederic Chopin,

one has to look at the very beginnings

of his compositional career.

He was completely natural pianist,

he was a completely natural composer,

even from a very young age.

If you think back to his first composition,

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

and a polonaise is an aristocratic dance.

He captured it completely and idiomatically

from the time he was seven.

Already it's regal.

I think when you look at Chopin and you ask yourself

where does something like this come from,

perhaps the only answer could be

that such a thing comes from God.

As an eight-year-old,

Chopin gave his first public performance

at the Radziwillow Palace, today's Presidential Palace.

The young boy was soon in demand

to play in fashionable homes in and around Warsaw.

Chopin's parents decided that this precocious talent

needed proper tuition.

By this point, the Chopin family was living

on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie,

which is Warsaw's main street,

and Father was teaching French at the Warsaw Lyceum.

Down the street was the church, and on weekends,

on Sunday, the family would to church,

they would make friends, and of course,

Father makes friends with other men there.

His name was Wojciech Zywny,

and Zywny was a music teacher.

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

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

he has an aptitude for the keyboard,

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

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

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

to be rather hefty, to drink too much,

Chopin described him as someone

who didn't bathe all that often.

I had in my imagination that you touch Zywny like this

and the dust would come out of his coat.

But I saw a drawing of him, and he wasn't like that at all.

In fact, he was quite slim,

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

And so Father brings him home

and there they are about to have music lessons.

The only trouble was Zywny was a violinist,

and thankfully this was probably responsible

for him staying out of Chopin's way

so that Chopin could create his own way

to play the pianoforte.

Violin teacher or not,

Zywny was certainly influential,

not least in encouraging Chopin to study in depth

the works of the classical masters,

above all, Bach and Mozart.

Chopin owed a great debt to Bach.

There's a lot of counterpoint,

which you often don't hear when pianists play

because they're only concerned with the right hand

and it makes them sound thin

and without the richness of the harmony,

but there's a lot of counterpoint in Chopin

and you feel his debt to Bach.

There's something in the melodic line

that comes directly out of Mozart.

In fact, the principle of the rubato

that is necessary for Chopin

is in a certain way also necessary for Mozart,

a different kind of rubato and a different style,

but the fact that the right hand plays

with a certain amount of freedom,

but not so much so that it influences

the regularity of the accompaniment.

Chopin the piano pupil was exposed to music

which had a continuous sound.

The violin can of course keep the sound going

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

The piano goes in the opposite direction.

With the piano, it starts at its loudest

and then inevitably diminishes,

so these two instruments are actually polar opposites,

but in terms of Chopin's early exposure

to the playing of melody, for instance,

he imbibed this singing sense

of a supple line full of changes of tone and color

that a violinist has at his or her disposal,

and so guided partly by the example of Zywny

and his violin,

and partly by the music which Zywny favored,

Bach and Mozart,

Chopin devised I would say only semi-consciously perhaps

an entirely new way of playing the piano,

a concept of piano sound

which had never been approached before.

In 1825, the 15-year-old schoolboy

took a piece he had written to a local music publisher.

It was accepted and printed as Opus 1.

The rondo Opus 1 in C minor,

this one for me, this shows a really young

and energetic, versatile musician

that really explores different ideas

that come up to his mind while just playing.

He was 15, 16 when he composed this piece.

Dear friend, I am well and jolly.

I can now ride,

though the horse goes slowly wherever he prefers

while I sit fearfully on his back like a monkey on a bear.

Flies often land on my lofty nose, but that's unimportant.

Dear friend, I am sorry if you've been wondering

about my long silence,

but do remember how many hundreds of pieces of music

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

lie in wait for me.

The Barber of Seville was played on Saturday in the theater.

I liked it very much.

Also a certain Mr. Rembielinski had come from Paris

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

You can imagine what a joy that is for us.

We never hear anything of real excellence here.

His left hand is as strong as his right,

which is an unusual thing to find in one person.

Dear friend, I am appointed organist for the school church,

so you see my future wife and all my children

will have double cause to respect me,

after the priest, the most important person there.

Every Sunday I play organ.

Yet always in the background

were weaknesses in his health, above all tuberculosis.

Dear friend, everyone's fallen ill,

and I too.

You may have thought that all this scribbling

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

It's from under my quilt and comes out of a head

that's been aching for the last four days.

They have put leeches on my throat

because the glands have swelled.

Chopin had outgrown Zywny

and had been receiving occasional instruction

from Jozef Elsner,

composer and principal conductor at the National Theater.

At 16, Chopin became a full-time student

at his music conservatory

based at the University of Warsaw.

People tend to think that Warsaw was a modest place

because we remember the ruins after the Second World War.

Actually, in the lifetime of Chopin,

it was a really beautiful place.

Chopin grew up among scholars.

He grew up among books.

The university library was filled

with some 130,000 books.

This was place filled with culture, with music.

Because of the Napoleonic Period,

many musicians came to Warsaw,

so Chopin was born in best possible period

in the Polish history of the 19th century.

It had theaters, opera houses, opera companies,

orchestras, famous musicians came and played in Warsaw.

Chopin heard Paganini in Warsaw.

Chopin was exposed to enormous amounts of opera in Warsaw.

Bach and Mozart were played, they were certainly taught.

Beethoven was well-known,

though not as well-known as in Vienna, obviously,

but certainly the idea that Chopin grew up

in a kind of provincial, deprived community

is absolute nonsense.

It was an immensely sophisticated city.

2nd of November, 1826.

Dear friend, the doctors are telling me

to walk as much as possible.

Meanwhile I go to Elsner for strict counterpoint

six hours a week.

I go to bed at 9 p.m.

All teas, soirees, and balls are off.

I live off oatmeal like a horse.

Maybe Paris would be better for me.

Tuberculosis took its toll in 1827,

but it claimed Chopin's adored 14-year-old sister Emilia.

Emilia was the house poet,

and he said that she was masterful at writing little plays,

and they would perform them,

and then he would accompany and direct,

and I can only imagine what it was like

when she fell ill and he suddenly lost her,

his friend, his sister, the younger sister, no less,

and the miraculous talent, everybody thought, in the house.

And I think the only time

that I have felt so deeply for Chopin,

more than I feel on a daily basis

when I encounter his music,

and I do every day at the piano,

was when I visited Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw

and came upon his sister's grave.

To stand there and imagine the kind of pain,

I somehow thought I understood

what that must have been like.

I wondered where did it lead in his music

and what would have come out of that pain.

The family couldn't bear to live

where Emilia had died.

They moved to a large third floor apartment

in this central Warsaw building.

Here Chopin continued to study and compose.

Chopin's teacher was impressed.

Elsner thought his student had amazing capabilities

and was simply a musical genius.

In July, 1829, Chopin left the Warsaw Conservatory,

and like any teenage school-leaver,

wondered what to do next.

Where else to go but the heart of popular music, Vienna?

After a pilgrimage to Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg,

Chopin arrived in Vienna on the 31st of July.

11 days later he performed in public.

Haslinger, my publisher,

told me it would be better for my compositions

if I gave concerts in Vienna,

that no one knows my name,

that the compositions are difficult.

I felt I was not ready to do myself justice,

but they hammered at me till I consented,

and the posters were out the next day.

When we hear this, we realize it is so varying.

It is a very early piece, very fresh, very spontaneous,

but a lot of Chopin qualities that we are used to

notice in later works are already present in this.

The concert of the 11th of August, 1829,

was a great success.

I played out of desperation,

but the variations produced such an effect

that I was obliged to return to the stage.

The Viennese papers praised me enthusiastically

and I played a second concert as they begged me to.

That second time I played the Krakowiak Rondo.

It too was a great success.

About the second concert, one newspaper wrote,

"This is a young man who goes his own road

"on which he knows how to please

"and which differs from all others.

"Mr. Chopin gives universal satisfaction."

Chopin returned briefly to Poland,

but the 19-year-old already knew

that his future lay abroad.

Dear friend,

I'm sure you will see that I must go back to Vienna,

not for Miss Blahetka, who is young, pretty, and a pianist.

Actually I have my eyes on another of whom I dream

and have served faithfully, though silently,

for half a year.

Anyway, I shall go from Vienna to Italy to study,

and next winter I expect to be in Paris.

Warsaw, 20th of October, 1829.

Kessler gives little musical evenings on Fridays.

Last Friday week we had Beethoven's last quartet.

I haven't heard anything so great for a long time.

Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.

You can't think how much I feel something is missing

in Warsaw now.

Chopin needed a broader portfolio.

In 1830, he completed a piano concerto.

He has a sense for this melancholy,

for this drama, for pain in his music.

Apparently over a lot of his pieces

he wrote the Polish word,

which I am told means something like regret, like pain,

and to find this expression is the key thing

for the performer really,

but a personality either has this ability

to sense these deep human emotions

or they don't,

and it's a mixture of their personal relationships,

of their surrounding also,

maybe the political circumstance

of their home country, their culture,

and their talent.

Warsaw, 27th of March, 1830.

The hall was full.

Both boxes and stalls had been sold out

three days in advance.

I can't endure the misery

of those last days before a concert.

Elsner complained he couldn't hear my bass passages.

The orchestra complained that I played too quietly.

The concerts didn't earn me much.

All the money went to the theater's cashier,

and he does as he likes.

The official bulletin declared

that the Poles should be as proud of me

as the Germans are of Mozart.

Obvious nonsense.

Composers have developed at very different times.

Some composers are really fully developed in their teens,

like Mendelssohn,

and others take a longer time.

But Chopin when he is 19 or 20

is at the full height of his creativity.

We see that in his piano concertos

or in such a simple piece like this, Nocturne,

which quotes a lot from the second piano concerto.

We don't know which came first,

the nocturne or the piano concerto,

but they in any case refer to each other.

The expression is so clear and so round

and so intense.

The nocturne starts with a simple cadence.

Being repeated.

And then we've got this simple tune

over a very simple accompaniment.

And that's basically it,

and then the tune, it's getting more elaborated,

there's this three-way part in the middle.

It returns,

makes quite a heartbreaking turn

in terms of the melodic development,

and then ends in C-sharp major,

which is really a heartbreaking turn

after this slightly,

C-sharp minor is a quite icy tonality,

and I really feel sometimes

that your heart is being frozen.

There's sadness, very touching, very moving,

but altogether the sense of melancholy.

Here it still seems like it's all going to end

without much hope, and then he does this.

And what if this is an outlook into a better world

or some hope?

In October, 1830,

Chopin performed his other piano concerto.

The E minor concerto is, yes,

it is very difficult to play.

In its own way it has its own challenges.

Technically it is very difficult

to manage all that fingerwork.

The passagework is not so natural.

I think Chopin's hand must have been

really quite extraordinary,

and in some ways the F minor concerto's

even more awkward in some of its placement,

although it does suit these old instruments.

The notes seem to just glide more easily

when you're playing on an instrument

that has a lighter touch

and more shallow depth on the action.

I think the greatest challenge in the concerto

is to be able to find that beautiful balance

of lyricism and virtuosity at the same time,

and this kind of subtle,

it has a rather classical base,

but at the same it just breathes Poland,

and that's a real challenge.

The challenge isn't to play Chopin or not,

so much the technical challenge is in the idea,

in the rubato for instance,

in the quality of the sound,

and in that spontaneous improvisational quality.

For me that's the most difficult,

to play the music as if it's not been studied,

as if it's your own piece of music

that you've just written at that moment

and it's just coming out of your heart at that moment.

That's very difficult.

As pianists we might be tempted

to go at it with full force on a modern piano,

often with a marking fortissimo

that would sound something like this maybe.

But I really firmly believe

that often from what we know how Chopin played the piano

that it was never very harsh or in your face

but quite noble in the sound,

that this has more inner drama and tragedy,

and for me it would more sound like this.

So much more inwardly turbulent.

Chopin's debt to opera was enormous.

He encountered it not only in the performances

and scores of Mozart,

but he heard a great deal of opera growing up in Warsaw.

Chopin actually was luckier than his operatic colleagues

in that the piano doesn't run out of breath

and he could sustain his lines even longer than a singer.

But nevertheless, he conceived those lines

in terms of the voice,

and even though the piano doesn't have to breathe

and he could spin these things out over a long time

but the singer couldn't,

they are still modeled

on the physicality of operatic melody,

and therefore he allows his lines,

which don't have to breathe, to breathe.

By 1830, Chopin had revealed

he had fallen in love.

Konstancja Gladkowska was a talented soprano

also studying at the music conservatory.

Some believe she inspired the slow romantic movements

of both concertos.

He realized he was a great virtuoso.

In his writings he seemed to indicate

that he certainly knew what he was capable of,

and at the same time I think

he was rather naive in some ways.

There is a kind of naivety that comes through in his music,

and he was also experiencing a wonderful

kind of puppy love affair with Konstancja Gladkowska

that certainly is very clear in the romance

in the second movement.

You can't possibly compose something like this

if you're not in love.

Or even something like this.

You see, Chopin, I think he could fall in love

with Polish women at the drop of a hat,

and as it turns out,

these Polish women that he fell in love with,

they didn't quite want him.

You know, he was diminutive, he was small,

he was a little bit sickly.

We have this idea that he was

this wonderful, incredible romantic figure,

but the truth is the hunk of the lot was Franz Liszt.

The women were chasing him all the time,

and Chopin wasn't showy that way,

and besides the fact, you know,

these were women whose parents were involved

in every aspect of their lives,

and they didn't want them to be involved

with this sickly young boy

who you wouldn't know what would happen to him

in the upcoming years,

and I think Chopin turned that kind of torture

into writing these absolutely perfect

beautiful pieces of music

that really sing to the soul.

Those concertos were great successes,

but the love he felt for Konstancja was not returned.

It was time to leave Warsaw.

On November 2nd, 1830, Chopin headed south towards Austria,

planning then to spend the winter studying in Italy.

Dresden, 14th of November, 1830.

Dear family, I have been asked to appear in public,

but I am deaf to it.

I have no time to lose,

and Dresden will give me neither fame nor money.

Yesterday I was at the Italian opera, Rossini's Tancredi,

but it was badly done,

and also in church at a high mass today.

I liked the voices,

but the composition was nothing much.

Except the art galleries,

I have not looked at anything in Dresden.

Prague, 21st of November, 1830.

I met the Saxon princesses,

the daughters of the former king.

I played in their presence.

They promised me letters of introduction to Italy.

Klengel gave me a letter for Vienna.

He drank my health in champagne at Mrs. Niesolowska's.

She insisted on calling me Chopski.

Vienna, 22nd of November.

How glad I am to be here, that I am making

so many interesting and useful acquaintances,

that I may be going to fall in love.

Vienna, 1st of December.

The local papers have written a lot

about my F-minor concerto,

what exactly I don't know

and have no curiosity to find out.

I will give a concert, but when, where, what I don't know.

There are so many good pianists here

that one needs a great reputation to gain anything.

During this week I have heard three entirely new operas.

Vienna, Christmas Day, 1830.

Yesterday it was Christmas Eve.

At midnight I went by myself to St. Stephen's.

When I entered there was no one there.

I can't describe the greatness,

the magnificence of those huge arches.

It was quiet, a mournful harmony all around.

I never felt my loneliness so clearly.

Let me describe to you my life here.

I am on the fourth floor, it's true it's in the best street.

My room is big and comfortable.

In the morning I am woken by an insufferably stupid servant.

I get up, they bring me coffee, I play,

then have a cold breakfast.

About nine comes my German tutor.

After that I play again.

All this in a dressing gown till 12.

Then a walk, lunch, black coffee in the best cafe house.

I pay visits, return home at dusk,

curl my hair, change my shoes, and go out for the evening.

About 10, 11, or sometimes 12, never later, I come back,

play, weep, read, look, laugh,

go to bed, put the light out, and always dream of home.

Chopin hadn't planned to leave Poland forever,

but at the end of 1830,

news reached of him of the November Uprising

against Russian rule.

Chopin was persuaded that he physically

could be of no help in Warsaw,

and, frustrated, remained in Vienna.

Chopin had in him a tremendous violence,

a tremendous anger.

When he was marooned

and he heard of the Russian crushing of Warsaw

and realized that he couldn't go back,

he was driven almost to the point of insanity.

He didn't often scream in music,

but when he did, my god, he did,

and one of the works written in the shadow of that invasion

and his awareness of his own exile at the age of 20

is the B-minor scherzo.

The very opening two chords of that work are a scream.

I don't think they should be played beautifully.

I think they should scream.

This is a savage work and it's an anguished work.

I think here you find Chopin unbuttoned, despairing.

Though there are moments of enormous tenderness,

they are tinged with an almost unbearable nostalgia

for what he's lost.

Chopin decided he'd had enough of Vienna.

The place to establish his credentials as a composer

was Paris.

In September, 1831, Chopin first set sight

on the city that would be home for the rest of his life.

Paris was well-known as the cultural capital

of the whole of Europe,

and as such it was the place

that most composers, particularly operatic composers,

and many performers felt they needed to make a success.

Chopin arrived there in 1831

and very quickly you can see from his letters

how excited he is by some of the musical culture.

I arrived here fairly comfortably,

though expensively, and I'm glad that I am remaining here.

Here one has the best musicians in the world

and the best opera in the world,

and I am gradually launching myself in this world.

There is the utmost luxury, the utmost swinishness,

the utmost virtue, the utmost ostentation,

at every step warnings of venereal disease,

shouting, racket, and bustle,

and more mud than it is possible to imagine.

One can perish in this paradise.

I am on the fifth floor at Boulevard Poissoniere, number 27.

You wouldn't believe what a delightful lodging.

I have a little room beautifully furnished with mahogany

and a balcony over the boulevard

from which I can see from Montmartre to the Pantheon.

Many persons envy me my view, none my stairs.

Paris, 14th of December, 1831.

Dear Mr. Elsner, I must think of clearing a path

for myself in the world as a pianist.

To be a great composer one must have enormous knowledge

which, as you have taught me,

demands not only listening to the work of others

but still more listening to one's own.

Over a dozen able young men,

pupils of a Paris conservatoire,

are waiting with folded hands for the performance

of their operas, symphonies, and cantatas.

There is an amazing collection here

of interesting musical folk of every description.

The period of the 1830s and '40s

when Chopin was in Paris is in a way

a time of relative stability.

In terms of the aristocracy though,

the old aristocracy are generally living

on the Left Bank in villas in Saint Germain.

They have become more or less irrelevant,

are sort of fading from the scene,

but there's a new aristocracy who are incredibly important

to the success of the new regime.

They're based largely on the Right Bank,

which is also where the opera house was,

it's where the Italian theater was,

it's where Chopin had his own apartments,

and that new aristocracy is an aristocracy

based partly on title but partly on wealth,

and some of those people,

these are the aristocrats familiar from Balzac's novels.

They've made their money in all sorts of different ways

in the 18th century

and are now happy to spend it,

and one of the best ways to signal your cultural class

is to pay attention to the arts and particularly to music.

Despite his love of opera,

his appreciation of quartets,

his prowess with concertos, his awe of symphonies,

Chopin decided to write sonatas

for just one instrument and just one performer.

Chopin was the most uniquely pianistic of all composers,

even though he never had a piano teacher.

He thought in terms of the piano,

he felt in terms of the piano,

his aesthetic world was conceived in terms of the piano.

He was basically indifferent to the orchestra.

It's not that he didn't have the capacity

to write well for it, of course he did.

Look, we're talking about one of the great geniuses

in musical history.

He just didn't care.

I think Chopin would have said

in his delightful Polish accent,

"You don't need anything but the piano.

"The piano's absolutely everything you need.

"You do not need the headache of musicians

"who are playing out of tune in the orchestra,

"and besides, if you treat the piano

"like it is an instrument with a soul and that it sings,

"it will be wonderful,

"and there's always question about

"whether the orchestra actually has a soul."

I think Chopin knew that in the piano,

he had everything he needed.

That said, to carve out a career

as a virtuoso pianist at this time in Paris

would have been extraordinarily difficult,

first of all, because you're up against

all the other hundreds of pianists

who were trying to do the same thing,

but secondly because there tends to be an element,

and this is embodied always by the figure of Liszt,

there tends to be an element of showmanship

in how a pianist would present themselves

so that a big enough audience

was prepared to come and watch.

Paris at that time was absolutely crawling with pianists,

and of course the best of them were very good indeed.

Two names stood out above all others,

and those two names were Liszt and Chopin,

and they could hardly have been more different.

Chopin was almost desperately afraid of appearing in public.

He loathed it and he saw no reason to court the public.

Liszt lapped it up, Liszt caused absolute hysteria

in the audiences that he played for.

Liszt thundered at the piano.

He went three or four pianos in a single recital sometimes.

No piano of that time could withstand

the power at this fire-breathing virtuoso.

Chopin shunned this kind of thing.

He could not bear coarseness in any way,

and when it came to music, his very soul,

the very idea of a coarse sound was anathema to him,

and this is one of the great myths about Chopin,

that he played relatively softly

because he was always so weak and frail.

This is not the case.

He played within this relatively constricted dynamic compass

because on the pianos of his day,

if you exceeded a certain intensity of sound,

a certain loudness, you lost the control of the tone,

and the result was something

which could border on the raucous, on the harsh.

This Chopin could not abide.

In many ways Chopin was the most original composer

in pianistic history.

He found the most fruitful and wonderful interplay

between the piano's percussive character

and its singing soul.

In a sense, it was Chopin who taught the piano how to sing.

I am confident that if Chopin had stayed in Poland,

he hadn't come to Paris,

and he hadn't played the beautiful pianos

built by Ignaz Pleyel,

probably his music would have sounded differently.

I think it's the specific qualities of the Pleyel pianos

that fed his imagination, fed his piano writing,

and it's this symbiosis between the piano and the composer

that created this incredible beautiful music,

and I think without Chopin

the Pleyel pianos wouldn't have sounded so wonderful,

and without the pianos,

his music wouldn't have been what it was.

The instruments that he played on

had a direct impact

on the kind of music that he composed.

When he was in Warsaw,

he was playing on Viennese instruments

that had an extremely light action.

You could play very quick,

and of course that lends itself

to music that has a lot of virtuoso, acrobatic passages,

so you find that in a lot of his concert music,

lots of ornamentation, lightness, quickness,

that's typical.

But when Chopin came to Paris,

his music changed rather radically just in a few years.

I think he was writing music

that dealt more with the quality of the sound.

A lot of his nocturnes are

from the French period in his life.

The figure of 60,000 pianos in Paris during the 1840s

at a time when the city had a population of around a million

is a remarkable statistic.

It's not entirely clear how the statistic was reached.

It's quoted in an article in 1845 in a Parisian journal,

and perhaps it overestimates,

but probably not by that much,

because we do also have statistics of, for instance,

how many factories there were making pianos,

and by the 1840s, by that same period,

the second half of the 1840s,

there was something like 180 piano manufacturers in Paris.

So we're talking about an enormous growth

in the production of pianos and the sale of piano music

and necessarily the number of people who were playing.

And that's a lot of piano teachers.

You know, when Chopin arrived at Paris,

he said, "There are only two types of pianists in Paris.

"There are asses and there are virtuosi,

"and most of the time

"it's impossible to tell the difference."

You have to think with all that need for learning the piano,

and here comes a perfect piano musician,

he had a lot of students that he could teach,

and there's also the fact that he began to play

,

and if he said in his Polish accent,

"Once you play by the ambassador,

"suddenly you have a great much more talent."

And because of it he made his way into society

and he became recognized

and he dressed in the fashion,

and so he was able to begin to charge 20 francs,

which at the time was a king's ransom for piano lessons,

and so he had all of fashionable Paris studying with him,

and it was really quite remarkable

that he built his career in that way.

Paris, Christmas Day, 1831.

Dearest friend, I wish you were here.

You know how easily I make acquaintances,

how I like to gossip.

Though I have no end to such acquaintance,

not one with whom I can be sad.

You would not believe how I long for a pause,

to have no one come near me all day long.

I cannot bear to hear the doorbell.

Some person in whiskers, huge, tall, superb,

comes in, sits down at the piano,

and improvises he doesn't know what,

bangs and pounds without any meaning, throws himself about,

crosses his hands, clatters on one key for five minutes

with an enormous thumb that once belonged in the Ukraine.

My health is bad.

I am happy on the outside,

but inside something gnaws at me, melancholy, indifference.

I have been accepted into the highest of society.

I sit with ambassadors, princes, ministers,

and even don't know how it came about,

because I did not try for it,

but it is a most necessary thing.

You are considered a bigger talent

if you have been heard at the English or Austrian embassy,

yet I know how much I still lack to reach perfection.

I have five lessons to give today.

You think I am making a fortune?

Carriages and white gloves cost more,

and without them, one would not be in good taste.

It always stuck in Chopin's craw

that he was born on the farm in Zelazowa Wola,

because I think Chopin really believed

that anybody who had this absolutely natural ability

at the piano was somebody

who had the divine right of being born royal,

and because he wasn't,

when he got to Paris and he started to be accepted

among ambassadors and play in such places,

he had to dress with unbelievable finery,

have a beautiful coat, elegant gloves.

He had to have an apartment on the right street

facing the right way,

and of course because of this he was always out of money,

so he would write home to his father

and his father would write back angry letters,

"Why don't you save money for a rainy day?"

Well, he couldn't save money for a rainy day,

because he somehow had to keep up appearances

so that he could fit into society.

Chopin reveled in the company of artists

and became acquainted with Berlioz,

Hiller, Heine, and others.

Schumann called him a genius.

A debut concert in February, 1832 was a great success.

His music was extensively published.

After only a handful of years,

Chopin had become firmly established

in the Paris musical hierarchy,

but he was far from content.

Though Chopin frequently wrote home,

he knew he could not return.

A successful career was only achievable outside of Poland.

He even became a French citizen.

Nevertheless, the keenly felt absence of family,

friends, and country haunted him.

Despite the fact that Chopin's father

was a French teacher,

Chopin didn't speak French properly, he never quite learned,

and in fact when he came to Paris

one would imagine that Chopin was running around

speaking a very perfect and beautiful French,

being the great,

but in fact it was described

how he actually pronounced things in French.

Instead of saying

the way it would be said,

the actual accent came out from him

.

You know, Chopin was very exotic,

and he brought Poland wherever he went with him.

The fact is, Chopin was an immigrant.

He felt himself, I would say,

very much a Polish composer.

Otherwise he wouldn't have written all these mazurkas,

all these polonaises, the Rondo a la mazurka,

there's a lot of these titles

that sort of reflect on his Polishness.

Take a mazurka, for instance.

They said he was incredibly descriptive.

He would probably say in his Polish accent,

"The rhythm of the mazurka is very specific.

"You must stop on the two or the three of each bar."

♫ One, two, three

♫ One, two, three

♫ One, two, three

♫ One, two, three

"This is the national character of the dance.

"It is somehow more peasant-like.

"It brings us closer to the art."

The polonaises of Chopin have something

terribly proud and Polish about it,

and they never sound military, they never sound fascistic.

Maybe because Poland was so afraid for centuries

and centuries and centuries

to be attacked either by Russia or by Germany

and therefore the feeling of national pride

is a very healthy feeling,

but I think it is an integral part of Chopin's music,

this very, very proud nature,

which in music is expressed

through a very strong sense of rhythm.

In August, 1835,

Chopin traveled to Bohemia for a family reunion.

We are happier than we can describe.

We hug each other and hug again, it's wonderful.

How good God is to us.

The same parents, just the same as ever,

only a little older.

We walk, I take my mummy on my arm, we talk,

we eat and drink together.

I am happy, happy, happy.

In Dresden en route back to Paris,

he met old friends from Warsaw, the Wodzinskis.

Chopin sat for Maria Wodzinska, aged 16.

They fell in love.

He asked her to marry him, and she accepted,

but her father thought she could do better

than a sickly pianist living in Paris.

The wedding was not to be,

and the letters he had received from her

were placed in a bundle marked my sorrow.

I think one of the essential concepts

of the romantic piano literature

is the composer as a single person,

a little bit as a suffering person,

especially in the case of Chopin.

It's not about the composer writing music for others,

it's the composer being sort of found

in one of his most intimate moments

sitting at the piano playing to himself,

and you feel a little bit like intruders,

we shouldn't be there listening to it.

It's very personal, highly personal music.

The first ballade was an incredible drama,

and what a journey from this invitation to a waltz is that.

And we go through different episodes,

and towards the end, this has become.

And there comes the most crazy episode in any piano piece,

his coda with this ballade is, what is it,

it's pure anger,

incredible drama,

and you just have to risk it and go to the end.

There's no way,

and when people talk about Chopin being pretty,

I want to show them this piece,

just the passage I played, this one.

He writes in this chord,

it should be played as loud as possible.

Life in Paris was, however,

in many ways pleasant.

Chopin composed, taught extremely well,

mixed at length with Polish exiles,

but above all he spent time with musicians and artists.

The painter Eugene Delacroix became a good friend

and was another that considered Chopin's music sublime.

In October, 1836, Chopin was invited by Liszt's mistress

to a party that changed his life.

There he met the most notorious woman in France,

Aurore Dupin, who published under the name George Sand.

She had a reputation as an outspoken, uncouth adulterer.

Chopin was not, at first, impressed.

This is Chopin at 28, painted by his friend Delacroix,

and this is George Sand.

After Delacroix's death,

the unfinished painting was cut in two and sold.

Had it been finished,

it might have captured the moment

when Chopin had fallen in love

with George Sand.

George Sand is obviously the most important woman

in his life,

the only one whose full-blown affair is well-documented.

They were the odd couple to end all odd couples.

Here was this very restrained, meticulous,

fastidious, charming gentleman, so well-dressed,

so conventional as a man, as conventional as a man

as he was unconventional in his music,

and on the other hand, he falls in love

with the most scandalous writer of her age.

For a start, her pseudonym, George Sand,

and she dressed as a man, top hat and cigar included.

So here is this outrageous woman

who would never fall shy of shocking anyone,

tranvestite, sharing her bed

with this funny little elegant Pole.

This was a very unusual liaison,

but we have here a joining together

for a significant period

of two quite amazing creators.

In 1838, the 28-year-old Chopin

traveled with George Sand and her two children,

Solange and Maurice, to Majorca.

They were in search of sun, solitude, and clean air.

Palma, 19th of November.

I am among palms, cedars, cacti,

olives, pomegranates, a sky like turquoise,

a sea like lapis lazuli, mountains like emeralds,

air like heaven, at night guitars and singing for hours.

My piano has not yet come.

Palma, 3rd of December, 1838.

I have been as sick as a dog these last two weeks.

I caught cold in spite of 18 degrees of heat,

roses, oranges, sharlyns, figs,

and the three most famous doctors of the island.

One sniffed at what I spat up,

the second tapped where I spat it from,

the third poked about and listened to how I spattled.

One said I had died, the second that I am dying,

the third that I shall die.

Chopin survived his diagnoses.

He enjoyed his time with Sand and her children,

and once a piano arrived, he composed feverishly.

George Sand gave herself to Chopin.

George Sand made it possible for Chopin to blossom

as he had never blossomed before.

The weather worsened,

and so did Chopin's health.

His tuberculosis returned.

The locals feared his sickness

and were offended by his strange companion.

They forced the couple to move to the hills

and take bare rooms in an abandoned monastery.

Eventually, public antipathy and winter rain

forced them to leave the island.

Marseille, 17th of March, 1839.

The last mazurkas brought me 800 francs the first of Lent.

I would rather sell my manuscripts for nothing,

as in the old days, than have to bow and scrape to fools,

and I'd rather be humiliated by one Jew than by three.

Marseille, 12th of April.

My angel is finishing a new novel, Gabriel.

Today she is writing in bed all day.

You would love her even more if you knew her as I know her.

George Sand owned a country house

in the village of Nohant in central France.

For the next decade she and Chopin would spend

almost every summer here.

Nohant was paradise,

clean air, no money worries, prepared meals,

peace, and solitude.

George Sand sometimes wrote through the night,

sleeping all day.

Chopin, however, rose with the sun,

worked, walked with the children, napped,

and met George and guests for dinner at six.

We know a good deal about how Chopin lived at Nohant

because of the letters he wrote to both his family

and to his friends,

and those letters indicate that he was involved

in every aspect of daily life.

He would go to market with the family,

he would take carriage rides,

he would visit friends,

he would have friends over for tea.

He was also involved in family politics.

You know, Madame Sand, she was very close to Maurice,

she loved her son, but she was not so fond of her daughter.

He then commented that there was all this kind of tension

between them that would often go on,

that he felt that Madame Sand was probably jealous

of her daughter,

but the fact remains that here was Chopin

living with the most famous woman in all of France,

and we see from the letters

that even though he was very polite at the table

and he was very quiet,

he had what to say about everyone.

He was highly opinionated and often very funny

and very picante, so to speak.

However, it did stick in his craw

that he was not born royal,

so perhaps the next best thing for him

would be to be the partner

of the most famous woman in the country

that he lived in.

He was shy, but he was very sociable.

He made friends easily, he adored his friends

and they had a good time together.

He was also very entertaining.

He was a gifted caricaturist,

which not many people realize.

That gift of caricature

translated itself into impersonations

which had his friends in stitches.

He was enormously amusing,

and this is not something

that one tends to find in his music

is this sense of humor,

this really almost subversive, mocking sense of humor.

For sheer output,

Chopin's summers at Nohant are

the most productive days of his life.

I really like this B-flat minor sonata.

It's an amazing journey from the nervousness

of the first movement,

the slightly angry dance of the second,

that then leads into the quiet

and absolutely still atmosphere of the funeral march

with an incredible outlook into a different world

in the middle part,

and then the last movement,

which for me is just like a big question mark,

how do you follow death?

And he writes this piece

that hardly has a tonality

and that it's just two voices

rumbling by.

Rubinstein apparently compared this one

to wind across the grave,

and I really like that image.

It's quite extreme, this sonata,

and a really great masterwork.

I think what is remarkable with Chopin is how

a character changes so rapidly

into something else emotionally.

I mean, it can seem idyllic

and then there is a moment of darkness.

This reminds us of Mozart, how rapid it can turn.

Let's take the third ballade.

Suddenly there's sadness.

Quite passionate.

This incredible loneliness suddenly, and then.

Again, trying to find its way.

I mean, these emotions,

these very, very deep and strong emotions,

so rapidly going from one place to the other.

That's fascinating to me.

When I was first introduced to the music of Chopin

as a young child,

I followed the myth, like most people,

that Chopin was this light, ethereal character

who somehow floated around some lawns

while ladies were fanning themselves

and eating bonbons and pastries

and he would just saunter over to the keyboard

and lightly float some beautiful melody out

with an ethereal harmony,

but as I came to understand Chopin's music more

and certainly Chopin the man through his own letters

and also the letters of his students,

I began to understand that here was a man

with fire in his soul,

this was a man who had very deep convictions

and a man who wasn't afraid

to express those convictions in his music,

and I think it is very important

not to pretend that his music is sort of just light,

salon accompaniment while people dine

or chat or have tea,

that in fact there's a great deal of fire and passion in it,

and what I came to understand

is that Chopin is a man who had very strong opinions

and he let people know about them.

Dear long-suffering friend,

please move the furniture to my new apartment

in rue Pigalle.

Take care with the crockery in the drawing room.

The little sofas are shabby, so please use the covers.

I'll need a new valet,

someone who won't be quarrelsome

and upset Madame Sand's country circles.

Don't forget to give the porter instructions

that people and letters should be sent on to rue Pigalle.

Now about Wessel, he's a windbag and a cheat.

Tell him I have no intention of giving my rights

over the Tarantella.

Also have fires in the fireplace for two or three days

before we arrive so it's not cold, dusty, smelly, or damp.

Oh, and go to the hatmaker Dupont

and have him make me a hat for Monday.

To Chopin, everything had to be beautiful,

and George Sand said of him, she said,

"He's not of this earth.

"There is something just too angelic about him,

"his soul, his approach to music."

There is such a delicacy about Chopin

that bleeds into absolutely everything he did,

so to be that kind of person

and to be embroiled in a relationship with George Sand

fighting and screaming and yelling

and high emotions and low emotions,

this constant back and forth,

is really such a juxtaposition

in terms of who Chopin was as a man and as an artist.

Nohant, September, 1841.

Let the publisher Masset have

the Allegro maestoso for 600 francs,

the Fantasie in F minor for 500,

and the C minor and F-sharp minor nocturnes,

the ballade, and the Polonaise in F-sharp minor

all for 300 francs each, thus a total of 2,000,

for France only.

The C-minor nocturne and the fourth ballade

are probably his two darkest pieces,

and I have loved this music so much

since I was 11 and first heard this.

Chopin feels different, Chopin is so enigmatic,

you know, there will be passages,

there are like improvisations in a salon

and in the next one,

there is a turn which is so existential and so deep

and gives harmony which is so full of suffering.

This music is really full of suffering, unbelievable.

I find I have to step back sometimes

when I'm performing it

because I get too involved emotionally.

It can be dangerous, you know.

You're not a good actor if you get too much into your role.

I'm more a classical person than a romantic person,

and I think that's the whole difference.

Sometimes if it's is highly romantic music,

it gets for me a little bit too personal

and I just like a little distance

between myself and the composer.

I feel more at ease than,

I feel an intruder when I play Chopin's music.

I think I shouldn't be there,

he should be sitting there playing his own music.

It's not meant to be played by others.

It's too personal for me.

I think Chopin just wrote the music for himself

and maybe not even to be heard by somebody else,

maybe by some very intimate friends,

George Sand, maybe Delacroix,

these people who were part of his inner circle,

but I think he wasn't someone who liked to sit onstage

and play in front of an enormous audience.

It was often too painful for him and too embarrassing.

I think he was a very shy and private person,

and you can hear that in the music.

It's such a sensual feeling to play his music.

You know, if you play like this waltz.

This is all about caressing the keyboard

and about the movement,

how the hand can tell a story.

It's unbelievably well-written for the piano

and with an understanding of anatomy.

He was just a unique man.

If you compare Chopin to other romantic piano composers,

I think his music is extremely difficult.

It's virtuoso in a good sense.

I mean, it's not virtuosity in order to show off

to your audience.

I think when Chopin wants to show off,

he does it in the very quiet, very soft pieces

like the nocturne or the Berceuse.

It's showing off his sort of velvety touch,

the way he can make a piano sound

that no other pianist could do.

I think that's much more his look at or listen to me,

how soft I can play,

rather than listen to me how fast I can play.

I think he wasn't bothered by virtuosity.

Sometimes when the music asks for it,

when it's a pure musical reason,

then he can write extremely difficult,

but it's never to show off, it's just when it's needed.

And then what happens is basically

it's quite a radical piece in a sense

because I don't know if I know another piece

where sort of the bass line stays really slow,

consequently the same, up to nearly the end,

and it's all a variation on that simple line,

actually technically quite demanding.

I find it quite hard to play

because he changes pattern every two bars basically,

but the sentiment is supposed to remain the same,

of this comforting sort of dreaming away state.

The key thing is the singing quality

and the slight needles of pain

that are in the cantilenas,

and that we should really always try to bring out,

and it's very hard to find the tone quality

in the Berceuse for

of this melody as opposed to the accompaniment.

How much light do we add to the right hand,

as opposed to this gentle rocking sound in the left hand,

and how much do we make it a line,

do we form it into a phrase,

how much do we let it simply happen?

Those are all the questions that need to be decided

and it changes also every time.

That's also something that I find very attractive

about Chopin's music.

There is a certain sense of improvisation.

It's written music,

but there's a sense of this comes to me in the moment.

Winters in Paris were spent teaching,

socializing, composing, but very rarely performing.

Publishing brought in extra money,

enough to dress well, be transported in style,

to dine out, and live comfortably.

His relationship with George Sand seemed comfortable too.

Dear George, how are you?

Here I am in Paris.

I have seen Delacroix.

We talked for 2 1/2 hours of music,

of painting, and especially of you.

Friday I shall be with you.

Here is a leaf from your garden.

I will say nothing more except that I am well

and I am your most fossilized fossil.

Nohant, 20th of July, 1845.

Dear family, I was not made for the country,

though fresh air is good for me.

I don't play much, as my piano is out of tune.

I'm always with one foot among you,

with the other in the next room

where the lady of the house works.

I have written three new mazurkas,

which will probably come out in Berlin.

Nohant, 11th of October, 1846.

Dear family, no doubt you are

already back from your holiday.

Here we have had such a beautiful summer.

Yesterday the lady of the house made jam from grapes.

The whole summer has been spent here

on various drives and excursions.

I was not that involved,

for these things tire me more than they're worth.

I am so weary, so depressed

that it reacts on the mood of the others,

and the young folk enjoy things better without me.

Among other news, you have probably heard

of Monsieur Le Verrier of the Paris Observatory

and his discovery of a new planet.

What a triumph of science,

to be able to arrive at such a discovery

by means of calculation.

Its name is to be Le Verrier, or Janus,

though Le Verrier himself prefers Neptune.

I have new works.

I'm not sure they are as good as in the past,

but time will tell.

When one does a thing it appears good.

Otherwise one would not write it.

Paris, April, 1847.

Dear family, Solange is not to be married yet.

After they had arrived here for the contract,

she changed her mind.

I am sorry about it and sorry for the boy.

You asked what I shall do this summer.

Just the same as always.

I shall go to Nohant as soon as it is warm

and meanwhile I shall stay here

and give a lot of lessons.

In 1847, the complicated relationship

with George Sand finally ended.

It had already turned platonic,

more nurse and patient than two lovers.

Tensions finally boiled over

when Chopin took the side of Solange against her mother.

All contact ceased.

Christmas, 1847.

Dear sister, George is a strange creature

for all her intellect.

She longs to find something against those who care for her.

She will not come to Paris this winter.

What has been and no longer is leaves no trace.

1848, revolution rolled over Europe

and broke out in Paris.

Chopin accepted an offer from a Scottish student,

Jane Stirling, to escape the bloodshed

and earn some much-needed money

by sailing to Britain to give concerts.

6th of May, 1848.

I am installed in the abyss that is called London.

Erard was very courteous and placed a piano at my disposal.

I have also one instrument of Broadwood

and one of Pleyel, three in a row,

but what is the use

when I have not the time to play on them.

I have innumerable visits to play

and my days flash past like lightning.

I have been asked to play in the Philharmonic,

but don't want to play there.

The orchestra is like their roast beef

or their turtle soup,

excellent, strong, but nothing more.

There is only one rehearsal and that's public.

We know that in Chopin's professional adult life

he only gave 30 concerts,

and most of those concerts were for a public

of less than 300 people,

which would be something that would be unheard of today.

That would be a small little concert,

but we also know that for a good many of those concerts

George Sand and her friends had to buy up

a number of the tickets

and hand them out secretly to friends

because Chopin couldn't fill a hall on his own.

He wasn't the kind of marquis name

that Franz Liszt was or perhaps Kalkbrenner

or any of these other characters,

the asses and virtuosi of Paris, as he said,

but he also didn't like to play in public.

He believed that the only way to make real art

was to actually be in a salon with four or five people,

each really listening and the artist communing with God,

and that was the way to create art.

He said, "In a hall with people in the front row,

"ugly monsters breathing at you

"as if they are going to eat you alive."

He said, "How can you possibly make art that way?

"Simply not done."

London, 2nd of June, 1848.

If I could have a few days without blood-spitting,

if I were younger,

I might be able to start life again.

London, July, 1848.

I am depressed, I can't find any comfort.

I have worn out all feeling.

I only vegetate and wait for it to end soon.

August, 1848.

I left London a few days ago

and made the journey to Edinburgh in 12 hours.

I have given two musical matinees

which people apparently enjoyed.

This doesn't prevent my having been equally bored.

The population here is ugly but apparently good-natured.

On the other hand, the cows are magnificent.

Scotland, 1st of October, 1848.

Dear friend, until 2 p.m. I am fit for nothing,

and then when I dress, everything strains me,

and I gasp that way till dinnertime.

Afterwards one has to sit two hours at table

with the men, look at them talking

and listen to them thinking.

I am bored to death.

Then my good Daniel carries me up to my bedroom

and I am free to dream and breathe.

London, October, 1848.

I have been ill the last 18 days,

ever since I reached London.

I have not left the house at all.

I have had such a cold and such headaches,

short breath, and all my bad symptoms.

My head is very painful.

Why should God kill me this way,

not at once but little by little?

London, November, 1848.

Even if I could fall in love with someone,

as I should be glad to do, still I would not marry.

We would have nothing to eat and nowhere to live,

and a rich woman expects a rich man,

or if a poor man, at least not a sickly one,

but one who is young and handsome.

Meanwhile what has become of my art?

Chopin returned to a calmer Paris.

The winter proved long and sickly.

Only the return of summer could ease his pain.

Paris, 18th of June, 1849.

I am stronger, for I have been eating

and have dropped the medicine,

but I gasp and cough just the same,

only I bear it better.

I have not yet begun to play.

I can't compose.

22nd of June.

I had two hemorrhages last night.

I just spit blood.

17th of September.

I am not to travel but to take a lodging with south windows

and stay in Paris.

After much searching,

one has been found for me at last,

very expensive, 'tis true,

Place Vendome number 12.

My sister, who has come from Poland,

will remain with me,

unless she shall be urgently sent for to go home.

I am ready to faint from fatigue and weakness.

As this next cough will no doubt kill me,

I implore you to have my body cut open

so that I may not be buried alive.

On October the 17th, 1849,

Frederic Chopin died.

He was just 39.

()

His sister, Ludwika, was with him, as were a few friends.

Solange was there.

George Sand was not.

A mass was held at the Church of the Madeleine.

It's believed that Chopin requested

the requiem by Mozart.

A few days later, Ludwika returned to Warsaw.

She carried a small urn that contained her brother's heart.

It was placed in the Church of the Holy Cross

within sight of the streets and apartments

where, as a child, he had first taken up the piano.

For the Poles, he is a national hero.

For music, he is one of the greatest composers of all time.