Vacations with Chopin in Warsaw (Vol. 9 No. 5)

The summer began with the Summer Solstice on June 21 and we have two months of rest ahead of us. OK, one month. No? Less? Maybe just one week, or a couple long weekends, if you live in the U.S. where people are so paranoid about having to prove that they are essential at work that they never take the time off, or take it in such small installments, that their absence is practically unnoticed.

Tune in to some mazurkas, first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Un7GuROlM

What Chopin concerts would you attend if you had two months for music, with a nice travel budget to boost your enjoyment. Where would you go?  There are Chopin Festivals and Chopin recital series all over. Let's see what's available in Warsaw and nearby. Of course, when you go there, you'll land at the International Chopin Airport, to start your trip on the right note. There might be a pianist playing at the airport, too...

CHOPIN IN WARSAW

DAILY AT 5 PM, NOWY SWIAT - HOUSE OF MUSIC
Located on the historic boulevard, lined with boutiques and restaurants, this series of concerts is held at 63 Nowy Swiat, and as the website says; "No tour of Poland's capital is complete without listening to Chopin's music live." So this would be a nice stop to make, after sightseeing or shopping, and before dinner...

DAILY AT 6 PM. STARA GALERIA ZPAF, OLD TOWN
Located at 8 Plac Zamkowy ("Castle Square") across the square from the Royal Palace, in a gallery of Polish Artist - Photographers, this series of concerts is held in an art gallery hosting photography exhibitions by Polish and international artists.

DAILY AT 6:30 PM. OLD TOWN, ARCHDIOCESE MUSEUM
http://www.chopinconcerts.pl/. Daily live Chopin concerts in Dean's Palace of the Warsaw Archdiocesan Museum The Old Town in Warsaw ul. Dziekania 1 (next to the Cathedral). Brilliant pianists are playing works of Fryderyk Chopin. The website informs us: "The Dean's Palace is a beautiful historic building, whose full-scale renovation was completed last year. The interior is exclusive and perfectly finished.The concert hall has very good acoustics and the highest quality grand piano produces sound that is pure and rich, which makes listening to the concerts an exceptional experience. The limited seating of 80 creates an intimate and romantic atmosphere resembling the one that was typical of the times in which Fryderyk Chopin performed. Each concert lasts about 55 minutes."  Lovely.

Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmiescie

DAILY AT 7 PM. KRAKOWSKIE PRZEDMIESCIE 62
Daily concerts in a place where Chopin played at the age of 13. It is located on the "Chopin Route" in the heart of Warsaw. A cozy atmosphere of a salon reproduces the type of music making that was practiced in Chopin's time.  The venue is a quiet coffee house during the day and becomes a concert hall at night.

DAILY AT 7:30 PM CHOPIN'S SALON ON SMOLNA STREET
Located in the downtown business district, in a lively and vibrant part of Warsaw, this concert series features a Steinway piano. Audience members get a glass of wine and a slice of cake to increase the enjoyment of the music.

SUNDAYS FROM MAY TO SEPTEMBER, at 12NOON and 4PM. LAZIENKI ROYAL PARK.
http://en.chopin.warsawtour.pl/events-en/. "For more than 50 years, Chopin Concerts have been held at the foot of the Fryderyk Chopin Monument in the Łazienki Royal Park. Eminent pianists perform every Sunday from mid-May until the end of September, at noon and 4 pm. Hugely popular with Warsaw residents and tourists alike, they are a unique opportunity to listen to classical music while sitting on a blanket in the shade of a tree." Free. The downside used to be the horrible amplification of the piano, which by now should have been fixed, so the piano sounds like a piano and not like an instrument with bronchitis. Aleje Ujazdowskie.

SUNDAYS FROM MAY TO SEPTEMBER, at 12NOON and 3PM. ZELAZOWA WOLA.
Chopin's birthplace, the little manor in an exquisite park in Zelazowa Wola, is a delightful site of Chopin recitals through the summer. You have to catch a bus tour, or drive out of town - Zelazowa Wola is located in Gmina Sochaczew, Sochaczew County, Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland. It lies on the Utrata River, some 8 kilometres (5 mi) northeast of Sochaczew and 46 km (29 mi) west of Warsaw. There are few things more lovely in life, than listening to an excellent pianist performing Chopin's music, while being seated somewhere in the park, filled with beautiful trees, gardens, and sculptures.  And none of that annoying amplification - the concerts are live and acoustic. At least were, when I last visited the site. A must for everyone, at least once in a lifetime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivOUu9CywwY

THURSDAYS FROM JANUARY TO JULY, AT PM. YOUNG TALENTS AT THE CHOPIN MUSEUM.
Located at Tamka St. the old "Ostrogski Palace' is now the Chopin Museum with a state of the art exhibition about the life, context, and music of the great pianist composer. Young pianists have a chance to present their talents in the concert hall within the museum on Thursdays at 6 p.m.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVTNj2e5zA0

Here's one talent, a 10 year old prodigy performing at the Royal Castle in Warsaw in 2018:

JULY 5-15, 2018. CHOPIN TO GORECKI FESTIVAL at CHOPIN UNIVERSITY OF MUSIC. Summer master classes for young pianists from around the world, with public concerts at the University's concert hall. Okolnik 2, Street, parallel to Nowy Swiat, walking distance to the Chopin Museum on Tamka Street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r2PC6KFF9E

Krakowskie Przedmiescie, towards Zamkowy Square.

TUESDAYS AT 6PM, JULY-AUGUST. CHOPIN EVENINGS AT THE CHOPIN UNIVERSITY
The same location as above, Okolnik 2, walking distance from the Chopin Museum on Tamka Street, free concerts every Tuesday by students and graduates of the University of Music or other institutions, give concerts on the patio or in the Concert Hall, depending on the weather.

Ballroom at the Royal Castle

12-30 AUGUST 2018. CHOPIN AND HIS EUROPE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL
Organized by the National Chopin Institute since 2005, this large-scale festival includes symphonic and chamber music concerts, as well as solo recitals in various venues around WArsaw, including the Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmiescie where his heart is buried, and the National Philharmonic.

Grand Theater of Opera and Ballet.

2-14 SEPTEMBER. FIRST INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION: CHOPIN ON PERIOD INSTRUMENTS. Organized by the National Chopin Institute, this competition places at the disposal of pianists a number of historic pianos, such as Erard, Pleyel, or Broadwood. The effects will be fascinating, I'm sure. Events to be held at the Grand Theater of Opera and Ballet, the Polish Radio, and the Holy Cross Church.

Period piano (Graff) in Paris.

Piano Bench in Warsaw

And of course, you can walk from one Chopin Bench to another, and see if the music boxes still work - they were embedded in these black marble benches since 2010. The benches are engraved with the route marking the most important locations associated with Chopin.  There is a different story associated with each location, a moment in Chopin's life - his studies, family, friends, or concerts.

Royal Lazienki Palace

Chopin Events in Poland in September 2016 (Vol. 7, No. 7)

Lazienki Palace in Warsaw

The main Chopin festival of the season, "Chopin and his Europe," ends on August 30, 2016. The Festival in Duszniki has ended already, so what is one to do, if going to Poland and wishing to immerse oneself in Chopin's music?

The fall has other attractions. The regular events of Sunday Chopin recitals at Zelazowa Wola, his birthplace, continue through September, at noon and three o'clock.  The regular Sunday Chopin Recitals at Chopin Monument in the Lazienki Park in Warsaw are also in full swing.

For the academically inspired, and intellectually curious there are two conferences in nearby Radziejowice.

NIFC INTERNATIONAL CHOPIN CONFERENCE 

Radziejowice 2016 - September 17-18.
The lyric and the vocal element in instrumental music of the nineteenth century 

The influence of vocal techniques on the instrumental music of the nineteenth century is widely  accepted and emphasized. The aspects highlighted in discussions of this issue include similarities in the shaping of melodic lines, the adoption of modes of articulation (portamento) and thematic affinities between particular works. Terms such as ‘vocality', ‘songfulness' and ‘lyricism' (indicating the character of Romantic compositions, often strongly subjective and focussed on the expression of inner experiences, in accordance with the properties of the lyric poem as a literary genre) are often used in relation to nineteenth-century music in a descriptive way, not referring to any actual features of a work. It would appear, however, that all these categories are of real significance in instrumental music and that during the nineteenth century they became integral elements of a work, determining its form. The aim of this conference is to examine whether - and if so, to what extent - the lyric and the vocal element in nineteenth-century instrumental music help to create form.

 This conference is one in a series leading to the 2020 International Chopin Congress. The purpose of the congress is "thorough research into the styles of Romantic composers, with the emphasis on the central role and context of the oeuvre of Fryderyk Chopin, considered with regard to particular components of a work: melody, harmony, rhythm, etc."

Please send any inquiries to Ewa Bogula: ebogula@nifc.pl.

ORGANIZER'S ADDRESS
The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Research and Publishing Department
ul. Tamka 43, 00-355 Warszawa, fax +48 22 44 16 113
e-mail: conference@nifc.pl, www.en.en.chopin.nifc.pl

CONFERENCE VENUE
Dom Pracy Twórczej w Radziejowicach , ul. Henryka Sienkiewicza 4, 96-325 Radziejowice

PROGRAM

16 SEPTEMBER
Mieczysław Tomaszewski, Narodziny liryki instrumentalnej z ducha pieśni
Kenneth Hamilton, Vocality and Structural Generation in Chopin, Liszt and Alkan
David Rowland, Piano Sonority and Melody c.1800-1835

17 SEPTEMBER, MORNING SESSION
Irena Poniatowska, „Śpiewaj, gdy grasz"
Kristen Strandberg, The ‘Singing' Violinist as Artistic Genius in Nineteenth-Century France
Agnieszka Chwiłek, „Der Melodie schenke ich jetzt grosse Sorgfalt". Ewolucja melodyki utworów I dekady twórczości Schumanna
Nikita Mamedov, Chopin's Études: An Analytical Look into Lyricism and Musical Characterization
Stephan Lewandowski, Fantasies or Caprices. Adolph Bernhard Marx' Influence on the Instrumental Style of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Zbigniew Granat, Chopin's Tones, Schubert's Words: The Secret Program of the A Minor Prelude
Charris Efthimiou, On the Instrumentation of the Lyric Theme of Gretchen of Franz Liszt's ‘Faust Symphony'

17 SEPTEMBER, AFTERNOON SESSION
Wojciech Nowik, Chopinowska „Eroica" - Nokturn c-moll op. 48 nr 1
Lauri Suurpää, From Quiet Lament to Raging Frustration: Vocal Topics in Chopin's Nocturne, Op. 48, No. 1
Meghan Chamberlain, Operatic Homoeroticism in Chopin's Nocturne in F major
Bruno Moysan, Liszt et Chopin à l'Opéra et aux Italiens. Qu'en est-il du théâtre ?
Silvia del Zoppo, Chopin's echoes in Italian piano music 1850-1880
Magdalena Oliferko, Hexameron - instrumentalny śpiew di bravura, czyli muzyczne studium psychologii postaci

18  SEPTEMBER, MORNING SESSION
Michael Pecak, ‘dire un morceau du musique': The Language Behind Chopin's Music
Risa Matsuo, Wpływ poezji polskiej na formę ballad Chopina
Krzysztof Bilica, Melos polski nad Dunajem
Wojciech Marchwica, Pieśni z komedioopery „Siedem razy jeden" Ludwika Dmuszewskiego i Józefa Elsnera jako wzorcowy przykład popularyzacji komediooper w pierwszej połowie XIX wieku
Jeremy Coleman, Melodic Flowers and the Mode of Production

CHOPIN COMPETITIONS CONFERENCE 

Second Meeting of the Organizers of Chopin Piano Competitions
Warsaw/Radziejowice 20‒22 September 2016

From the NIFC Website:

"We wish to invite individuals involved in the organising of Chopin competitions to collaborate with us. We invite you to help create our website: we would like it to be, to a considerable extent, a joint website for all of us organisers of Chopin competitions.We also want organisers of Chopin competitions to meet with each other, exchange their experiences and support one another. Our website will facilitate such contacts, but it will never replace personal, ‘real-life’ encounters. That is one of the aims of the conferences, initially held at Radziejowice, near Warsaw, and in future in different countries, co-organised by host competitions. Besides active contributions to the website, in the future we wish to turn participation in the conferences into a permanent platform of understanding and cooperation, in accordance with the ideas and the will of participants."

https://ccc.nifc.pl/en/start/page

https://ccc.nifc.pl/en/radziejowice/year2016

Chopin's Birthday Parties After 200 Years (Vol. 4, No. 3)



Sculpture of a transparent piano, Chopin's Birthday Concert,
March 1, 2010,  Grand Theater, Warsaw, Poland

Was Chopin born on February 22nd, 1810 or on March 1st? By now, the March date is generally accepted. Why the confusion, then? Because of Chopin's birth record in the church books in Brochow, where he was baptized on April 23, 1810, with Fryderyk Skarbek (1792-1866), the son of the employer of his father, Count Skarbek, as his godfather. The record, discovered in 1892, gives February 22 as the birth date, but Chopin's family has always celebrated his birthday in March. The future composer's names are listed in Latin: Fredericus Franciscus.

The Brochow church was the parish for the estate of Zelazowa Wola, owned by Count Skarbek and now celebrated as the birthplace of Chopin. The pianist's father, Nicolas Chopin (1771-1844) was a son of a French wheelwright, Francois, and was born in a village in the district of Lorraine, France.  The Chopin family, in turn, had roots leading back to an impoverished Swiss village in the Alps. The 16-year old Nicolas came to Poland in 1787 with Adam Weydlich, an estate manager for another Polish aristocrat, Count Michal Jan Pac. After the estate was sold, Weydlich and Chopin traveled to Poland, where the composer's future father spent five years working in Weydlich's tobacco factory in Warsaw. He changed his first name to Polish - Mikolaj and became a Polish patriot.  A participant in the Kosciuszko Insurrection of 1794 - the last failed attempt at defending Poland's independence - Mikolaj Chopin was injured in the fighting and left Warsaw to work as a tutor for sons of landed gentry. 

In June 1806 Mikolaj Chopin married Justyna Tekla Krzyzanowska, a poor relation of Count Skarbek in the same Brochow church where his son was later baptized. The Count and Countess Ludwika Skarbek had four children; the Chopins first, Ludwika, was named after the Countess. However, soon after Fryderyk's birth, the quiet estate life ended. When the Count left the country due to his unpaid debts and the Skarbek children grew up, the abandoned wife could not afford a tutor. The Chopins had to move elsewhere.  The family packed their bags in July; Nicolas became a French teacher at the Warsaw Lyceum and the young Fryderyk's (or "Frycek" as he was nicknamed at home) urban childhood began. 

Did Chopin celebrate his birthday? Apparently not. There are only seven mentions of this word ("urodziny") in his letters, and only two of these relate to his own birthday and name-day - in letters from his mother (1842 and 1848).  The other "birthdays" are celebrations of the Parisian society to which Chopin was invited. There are, however, twenty four mentions of the name-day - "imieniny" - the celebration of the patron saint after whom an individual is named and who serves as the individual's holy protector and benefactor.  Some of the earliest documents in the Chopin Museum in Warsaw are beautiful cards he made and painted for the name-days of his father and mother.

In fact, the very first letter by Chopin, at the age of sixteen, is such a card for Dear Papa, written on December 6, 1816, the feast of St. Nicolas, the traditional patron of gift-giving. 

Gdy świat Imienin uroczystość głosi /

Twoich, mój Papo, wszak i mnie przynosi

Radość, z powodem uczuciów złożenia,

Byś żył szczęśliwie, nie znał przykrych ciosów,

Być zawsze sprzyjał Bóg pomyślnych losów,



Te Ci z pragnieniem ogłaszam życzenia.

When the world announces this celebration of thine 

Name day, my Papa, it brings joy also to me,

Because of the confluence of my feelings. 

May thou live happily, not knowing harm or strife,

May God always bring thee a prosperous fate,

These are the wishes I desire for thee.



Actors in 19th Century costumes mingled with the audience,

Grand Theater, Warsaw, March 1, 2010.



Six months later, on 16 June 1817, Fryderyk wrote a name day wish for his mother:

Imienin Twoich, Mamo, Ci winszuję!

Niech ziszczą nieba, co w mym sercu czuję:

Obyś zawsze zdrową wraz szczęśliwą była,

Jak najdłuższe życie pomyślnie spędziła.

I congratulate thee, Mama, on thine name day

Let heaven bring about what I feel in my heart

May thee be always healthy and happy

May thee live the longest life in prosperity.



Indeed, there are abundant references to name-days in the entire family correspondence, including Fryderyk's annual "name-day" letters to his father and mother. They send their wishes in return. His mother, Justyna, wrote in March 1842, with some motherly advice about trusting God and thankfulness for divine blessings, which alone help being "happy and peaceful." As she explained: "I thought much about you here, my dear child, on your birthday and name day I'm sending to you in my spirit my blessings, while praying for your prosperity. Let God bless you and always keep you in his care." 

One of the last letters of Chopin to his family, written on June 25, 1849, four months before his death, in the throes of last illness, mentions a name-day letter to his Mother as a means of being there at her celebration, if not in body, at least in spirit and thought.

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Poster of Chopin's Birthday Concert, Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 2013

The music world celebrated Chopin's 200 birthday in a multitude of ways back in 2010. I attended an amazing birthday concert at the Grand Theater of Opera and Ballet in Warsaw on March 1, 2010, as a part of the Third International Chopin Congress.  

We heard the Piano Concerto  in E Minor twice the same evening, in two completely different interpretations, of which the modern and Olympian Garrick Ohlson's remains in mind.

Maja Trochimczyk with Garrick Ohlson after Warsaw Chopin concert, March 2010.

Maja Trochimczyk with actress Alina Janowska at the
Chopin Birthday Concert, Warsaw, March 1, 2010.

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Three years later, on March 5, 2013, the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Society of Los Angeles decided to celebrate Chopin's Birthday with a bash involving actors and pianists at the Colburn School of Music. The event, grandly entitled "An Evening of Piano and Drama Featuring Internationally Renowned Artists" featured two phenomenal pianists - Gloria Campaner - an Italian pianist who won the previous edition of the American Paderewski Piano Competition, and John Perry - Professor of Piano at USC Thornton School of Music, Kocyan's mentor and teacher, and one of the most important piano pedagogues of this century.

Their interpretations of Chopin, Schubert, and Debussy left the audience breathless. John Perry's profound and inspired interpretation of two Impromptus by Franz Schubert was especially fascinating - as he celebrated Chopin's genius by not playing his music, but by "channeling" his spirit of sublime artistry and emotional maturity. Gloria Campaner, a rising star of the classical music world, has played a half-recital, with German and French music enveloping the "core" of Chopin.

Chopin Birthday Concert of the Paderewski Society - R to L: Jane Kaczmarek,
Marek Probosz, Ms. Pawlicki, Wojciech Kocyan, Gloria Campaner, John Perry,
Dmitry Rachmanov, and Mr. Pawlicki, March 5, 2013, Colburn School of M usic.

Excellent quality and talent were also apparent in the performances by Wojciech Kocyan, Artistic Director of the Paderewski Society and Professor of Piano at Loyola Marymount University, and Dmitry Rachmanov, Professor of Piano at the California State University, Northridge. The talents of these pianists were well matched by the acting ability of Jane Kaczmarek and Marek Probosz who narrated the Birthday Bash and turned from a concert into a party, with some goofy fooling around.



The comedic element was especially strong in a staged performance of a scene from Paderewski Memoirs, with Kocyan standing in for Paderewski and noodling at the piano, and Kaczmarek performing his impetuous "know-it-all" hostess, a student of Chopin convinced she knew better how to play a particular etude. Their act, complete with a grandfather clock - the ringing of which was to be a part of the music - as well as costumes and stage setting was quite entertaining. Coupled with an incredibly high level of artistic performances by the pianists, it would have left us with a delighful feeling of an evening well spent.



Gloria Campaner talks with John Perry, Chopin Birthday Concert, March 5, 2013.

All is well that ends well, one should say, though, and this concert did not end well at all. Instead of just singing "Sto Lat" to Chopin with Kocyan's improvised accompaniment at the end of this Birthday Concert, we were explosed to a transcription of "Happy Birthday" for two pianos in Chopin's style. Worse still was the fact that this piece came right after the last notes of l'Isle joyeuse by Debussy played by Gloria Campaner with such sublime inspiration that the listeners were still on the "seventh cloud" of artistic delight... Thanks to Kocyan who decided to call for a Polish "Sto Lat" right afterwards, we ended the concert on a high note and left this tribute to Monsieur Chopin with a song...

Gloria Kampaner, Wojciech Kocyan, and John Perry after the Chopin Birthday concert.

Lesson for the future: if you have engaged the talents of the stature of Kocyan, Campaner, Perry and Rachmanow, do not put a Mr. and Mrs. Pawlicki in this exalted company, where they clearly do not belong. Nuff said.   

At the end, I went to say hello to Jane Kaczmarek, whose cordial stage presence and lovely voice and laughter have enlivened this birthday concert. She had the same magical effect during the first Chopin's Birthday Bash organized by the Paderewski Society in February 2010. I was thrilled then to hear that she read several poems from the Chopin with Cherries anthology - including some of mine.  But I was not there to hear her, since I was in Warsaw, at the Chopin Birthday Concert...



Maja Trochimczyk, Jane Kaczmarek with Paul Tensor and friend, after the concert.

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Photos from Warsaw Chopin's Birthday Concert, (c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

Photos from Los Angeles Chopin's Birthday Concert, (c) 2013 by Krzysztof Onzol.