Hi
there – happy Tuesday!
I’m
a pianist (and harpsichordist...harpsichord is so hard core, I love it) and
have a couple of degrees in music history. Therefore, I feel it’s my pianist/musicological
duty to inform all of you fabulous people in the Wonderful-World-Of-Orchestral-Music that it's time for all us
pianists to get all up in the concert hall with "Chopin Year" to
celebrate the 200 years since Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola,
Poland, 1810. The exact day of birth is contested between February 22 and March
1 (birth certificate said one day, family said the other), so I feel totally
okay about putting this up on March 2nd. Why not extend the party,
right? I mean, it is Chopin year,
after all (even if our General Manager, Joshua, disagrees with me that we
should celebrate for a whole year – what do you think?).
Of
course, Chopin did compose for instruments other than the piano. For example,
did you know he composed a bunch of songs with Polish texts, as well as a few
little gems for cello and piano and a piano trio? Okay, so he didn’t get away
from the piano that much. Anyway, my favorite four measures
of music (3:09-3:15 on the video, in case you’re dying to know) ever written
are by Chopin. Do you have a few measures of music that are your absolute
favorite? What measures? What piece of music?
More
information on “Chopin Year” can be found here at on The Fryderyk Chopin
Institute's (really great looking!) Chopin Year homepage.
Now
it's time for some super awesome multimedia.
First,
the promotional video (in which I was glad to note the pianist is, in fact, wearing a seat belt of
sorts...is there some rule about playing and driving?...and more importantly,
why have I never played Chopin whilst being driven around town on a flatbed
truck?...even more importantly, can someone set that up for me? I know lots of Chopin...we
can drive for a while):
On
a more serious note, here is the preview for a great looking documentary film
written and directed by Jerzy Szkamruk and Piotr Sławiński, entitled Fryderyk, which explores “contemporary
Poland through the eyes of Fryderyk Chopin 200 years after the composer's
times.”
Mazurka anyone?