F Chopin

[Applause] Bark is like an astronomer who with the help of ciphers finds the most wonderful stars. For him the earth is nothing. He is always looking towards the heavens. Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit. Therefore, on these great horizons, man seemed so small to him that he could only see the greatest ones. As for example, Napoleon. I do not climb so high. A long time ago, I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man. It is there that I look for nuances of every feeling which I transfer to music as well as I can Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] I find myself reflecting on the words and the world of Shopan of a 100 years ago and once more wondering and marveling. at the special qualities that have made music his music live through the years. You see, he is our greatest composer for the piano. And whenever I play Shopan in public, it is as though suddenly a beautiful fragrance were coming out of the piano. I play Bach and Mosart and Beethoven but on the on the same program. But when I play shopan a nocturn or an impromptu the whole world is suddenly transformed. I feel it and the audience feels it and we are all suddenly aware that we are in the presence of a master whose works for the piano were matchless for originality, sheer beauty and felicity of expression. This was a case of genius of course you know because here was this young boy in 1810 born in a small village uh near Warsaw. Um, everyone wonders where he got his musical ideas because uh there were comparatively few opportunities even to hear great music or less great artists. Of course, there were the occasional uh visits of uh virtuosi who came to give recital, but nothing uh to explain the uh the the style of composition and the new kind of piano playing so startling uh as to make music never the same again. A very good example of this is one of the later works of uh of Shopan the fourth balad in F minor. When the first of the balads was sketched in Stuttgart in 1831, Shopan was on his way to Paris uh where he was soon to become the darling of the French salon. uh when the last of the balards was published in 1843 he was already sick with tuberculosis which was to end his life at the age of 39. These dozen or so years thus virtually define his career as a composer. And each piece of music in its own way is a fair sample of a style so original so unmistakable that it must be accounted a work of genius. Shopan although not specific about the stories behind the Balads said they were all influenced by the poems of the Polish poet Nikki. You know, I'm convinced that every composer writes not merely notes in a given tempo or key and rhythm, but on the contrary encloses a mood of the soul. That is a program, a story in his composition in the rational hope that the interpreter and the hearer may understand what it is he's trying to convey. The emotional keynote of this particular piece is longing sadness and this keynote is well preserved throughout the whole work. It is an almost personal note as if Shopan had been reminded of some event in his own life and had abandoned himself to the mood of the moment. It is a masterpiece in journal literature as the Mona and Madame Bouvi are masterpieces of painting and pros. [Music] Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] I talk less and less with people about music. I am fashionable, but there are few who understand me or fall. I believe this is as it should be because he who writes only for present day tastes will be forgotten tomorrow. If one should only rattle and shake an old chain, everything would be standing still. One must add one's own original link to the chain. The more original the link, the greater the progress. [Music] [Music] With Polish music, the question is more difficult than with another. Here you have wooden doors in nobles tunics and cheap tinsel and ordinary eagles crudely carved with a blunt knife. Noisy motions in which there is no heart. All this must be thrown far away. One must search and dig deep into the hearts to the very bottom. One must dig in the Polish earth until one's hands are bleeding. And having searched to that great depth, you'll at last find feelings as genuine as diamonds, and having washed them of what is false and superfluous. One must polish them with one's talents, and only then may they be presented to human eyes. [Music] [Music] Art must be the mirror of the national soul. A nation which reaches out for foreign art because it is supposed to be better will never see its own soul. Art is like clothes. Those of somebody else will be too wide or too tight even if they were more beautiful. Of our dances I love the kuya best. There is in it a melancholy sadness always so close to my heart. and its tuneful melody has a unique cantalina. [Music] The crude motif or theme of folk music and songs is like a raw potato which cooked in the fire of great talent and strained through a dense sie of creative originality may be put on the gourmet's table. A musical work should itself reveal its essence. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up [Music] here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat.