Chopin

Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Xaver Scharwenka







Born in Poland in 1860, Paderewski divided his life equally between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dying in the war torn year of 1941, Paderewski was one of the most respected persons in the world, as certainly the most famous pianist of the first decades of the century and as the former prime minister of his tragic nation. If ever there was an inspirational force, it was Paderewski. No man had been so honoured, no pianist since Liszt had thrilled audiences to such fever pitch. Like a knight errant, he stood for goodness, chivalry, and charity; one writer exclaimed, "his heart is pure, his life is clean, his ideals lofty." Yet today, except perhaps among the elderly, Paderewski is mostly a forgotten figure: once the hero of millions of American Poles, there is no highway named for this freedom fighter.

As a concert pianist, Paderewski, although the biggest box office attraction of the day, lived in a golden age of pianists, and some of his generation, in certain respects, were greater virtuosi than Paderewski. But his competition were giants such as Rosenthal, Friedheim, Carreño, Busoni, Godowsky, Rakhmaninov and Sauer. It was a time when high craft was paramount in the pianistic profession, and Paderewski's particular ability to communicate with audiences in an almost magical sense was begrudged or suspected. Some colleagues were envious of his seemingly mesmeric power and few gave him the proper credit of being the true virtuoso he was. One pianist remarked, "Paderewski does everything well, except play the piano", whilst many critics carped at the smallest flaw. Later, as a political leader, it was said that he was not a truly serious artist. Within the music profession, Paderewski never quite received the high merit he deserved. During the last few years of his life he was ravaged by exhaustion, the death of his wife, and a painful decline in his health. Still, during the Great Depression he played on.

The 1930s were a dreadful time for piano building and performance. Radio and recording had already announced the death-knell of the amateur. The public had no money for entertainment outside of the movies. Concert series were depleted, and artists' fees were drastically reduced. Before the depression, the United States alone had nearly three hundred piano manufacturers, which the depression cut to just thirty, and firms such as the Aeolian Company withered with them. The piano also suffered indirectly from the dramatic rise in sports within the school system; band instruments were in high demand, with a consequent loss in piano sales. Nevertheless, Paderewski continued to hold his sway over the public, but by the late 1930s he was viewed as a symbol of Poland who used his piano to raise funds for his beleaguered homeland.

After the Second World War, Paderewski was remembered as a gallant gentleman from a vanished age. His kind of music-making sounded old-fashioned, and arbitrary. Although the prestige of his name was used for the scholarly new Polish 'Paderewski Edition' of Chopin's music, Paderewski himself had no scholarly ambition. Serious music had begun taking more academic paths. The Urtext was becoming ever more important, and the personality of the player less prized. Music-making generally was becoming more homogenized than Paderewski would have permitted for himself. To musicians of his and previous generations, composing and playing were flowers from the same seed, both being forms of artistic self-expression. As the repertoire became more standardized, a certain mysterious respect for the composer's text emerged from which fear developed in the conservatories among teachers and pupils. Performances were more conservative and less colourful. Recordings proliferated and dozens of those marketed were bland, fleshless "correct" renditions, sterile and note-perfect. The masterpieces of Western music had become relegated to the museum of the perpetual past. People wept less at live concerts, and they found it difficult to weep over recordings which always sounded the same, but which nevertheless conditioned their response to the composition to one specific conception.

Paderewski's recordings were part of a primitive technology, and his Aeolian piano rolls had vanished with the Reproducing Piano. If Paderewski's fabled pianistic career is now a chapter in the history of the instrument, at least a thread of his deeds remain alive. Paderewski also composed, and his works have added greatly to his lustre. I have noted that his Minuet was world-famous, yet recently I asked my class at Juilliard if they knew the Minuet or, in fact, any of Paderewski's works. The answer was a unanimous "NO!" I then played the Minuet, but not one young pianist had ever heard its "antique" charm. Clearly, Paderewski is not one of the immortals.

The pianist was well-trained in composition. His sense of form was excellent, and he could sustain a large-scale format like the Violin Sonata, Op. 13, while the Variations and Fugue in A minor, Op. 11 is impressive in design. He wrote a charming piano concerto and a Polish Fantasia for piano and orchestra and, best of all perhaps, an outstanding Piano Sonata in E flat minor, Op. 21, which for its turgid moments also possesses richness and some grandeur. Paderewski's smaller piano pieces are attractive and effectively written, often with a warm lyricism such as is displayed in the A flat Légende, Op. 16, No. 1. From 1876, at the age of sixteen, until his huge symphony in 1907, he composed twenty-four opus numbers. In all, they contain ninety pieces including, Manru, a three act opera. Looking at his music, it is obvious that he had an estimable gift for composition. Unfortunately, all that he expressed had already been said before or with more creative vitality. By his middle years he was out of sympathy with the new directions music was taking. He probably felt that his composing was fruitless, and from 1907 he produced very little.

Paderewski increasingly centred his life around performing, and living and entertaining in grand style at his villa near Morges, Switzerland. Through the First World War, he created a new 'self', the altruistic, professional patriot. His shattered Poland was a magnificent cause, and as a highly effective orator he grasped the challenge to his heart with a defiant passion. In hundreds of rousing speeches, he ignited his fellow Poles to give money and fight for their fatherland. He had "no longing for piano playing" he said, and told friends "it is more exciting to speak than to play." Paderewski's efforts were rewarded when he signed for Poland at the Versailles Peace Conference. His talent as a diplomat was held in high regard by Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and all the leaders of the allied powers. It was with high drama, that the former pianist became the leader of his nation's government in 1919.

But his beloved country was starving, split by power politics, the Red Army at Warsaw's gates, the League Of Nations an abject failure and Paderewski's premiership in shambles. Leaving politics, he found his fortune spent on high living, helping Poland's national debt and on completely subsidizing his political career. Once, when asked if he would return to playing he said, "Never, I shall give myself up entirely to composition."

However, on a beautiful May night in 1922, while resting at his ranch near Paso Robles, California, he quietly unlocked his piano. To his delight, he found that his once badly-strained hands never felt better. Excited by the prospect of re-entering the music world and rehabilitating his finances, Paderewski began the arduous task of refurbishing his repertoire. For seven months he savagely prepared, working up to twelve hours a day. For more than five years he had not touched a piano. He wrote, "I felt not only very familiar with my instrument, in spite of those many years spent in complete separation from the piano, but I was more certain of my means, more master of my nerves than ever before." An American tour of fifty concerts was arranged. He inaugurated his return to concert life on 22 November 1922, at Carnegie Hall. Every pianist capable of being at the event was there. Never one to disappoint the public, the sixty-two-year-old veteran performed a monumental recital. The programme read as follows:-

Variations Sérieuses, Mendelssohn
Fantasy in C major, Schumann
Sonata in F minor, 'Appassionata', Beethoven
Ballade in G minor, Chopin
Nocturne in G major, Chopin
Mazurka in B flat minor, Chopin
Scherzo in C sharp minor, Chopin
Au bord d'une source, Liszt
Étude de Concert in F minor, Liszt
Polonaise in E major, Liszt

Encores:-
Impromptu in A flat major, Schubert
"My Joy", Chopin - Liszt
Valse in C sharp minor, Chopin
Hungarian Rhapsody, No. 2, Liszt
Liebestod, Wagner - Liszt
Minuet in G, Paderewski
Étude in F major, Chopin

Paderewski's return to the concert platform was a heart-warming triumph. The critic, Henry T. Finck, one of the pianist's earliest supporters, called it "the most thrilling moment of my life." The audience stood in awe with rapt reverence. They were witnessing the re-birth of a great artist and paying tribute to a noble humanitarian spirit. The tour brought Paderewski half a million dollars. The grand man of the piano was back in business. Throughout the 1920s, he was to perform to great acclaim.

Paderewski once advised a young pianist "first conquer every technical problem in the piece. Next, work out the form and architecture of the composition, then know exactly what you want to do with every musical detail, and finally forget everything and throw yourself open to the god of inspiration." Indeed it was being in touch with inspiration that was Paderewski's great secret. He once said, "if you want to make your audience red-hot, you must, yourself, be white-hot." Paderewski brought a wonderful freedom to his playing. It was a performace that lived in the moment. He never relied on the formulas so many pseudo artists use, camouflaged by idiotic perfection.

Finck, lauded his pedalling, calling it, "unique, inspired, unequalled." But continued, "his most personal trait is the bewitching way he lingers over beautiful details (and it was this that) "... most frequently thrilled his audiences." Paderewski, always aware that irregularity is one of the most potent components in the art of interpretation, wrote, "every composer, when using such words as espressivo, con molto sentimento, con passione, and so on, demands from the exponent, according to the term indicated, a certain amount of emotion, and emotion excludes regularity... to play Chopin's G major Nocturne with rhythmic rigidity and pious respect for the indicated rate of movement would be as intolerably monotonous, as absurdly pedantic, as to recite Gray's famous Elegy to the beating of a metronome. Our human metronome, the heart, under the influence of emotion, ceases to beat regularly - physiology calls it arhythmic, Chopin played from his heart. His playing was not rational, it was emotional."

Xaver Scharwenka cut a swaggering figure across the musical scene of the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. Although today there is a thriving Scharwenka Society in Lübeck, Germany, the Polish-born pianist and composer has been fairly forgotten. But what a colourful life he lived; success and glory were his in abundance.

Born on the 6 January 1850 in a small town near Posen in Poland, Xaver, at the age of four, gravitated to the piano through his older brother Philipp's piano lessons. (Philipp, 1847-1917, developed into a fine violinist and composer.) Unfortunately, solid training was not available to the budding pianist, and Scharwenka was rather self-taught until the family moved to Berlin in 1865, where he entered Theodore Kullak's famous Piano Academy to study with Kullak himself. Theodore Kullak had been a pupil of Czerny, as was Liszt and Leschetizky, and became one of the most successful piano teachers of the nineteenth century.

The fifteen-year-old Pole thrived in the heady atmosphere at the Academy with fellow pupils, Hans Bischoff, Louis Nicodé, Alfred Grünfeld and Moritz Moszkowski. Berlin appealed to the youth, and the city would become his headquarters for his international career. After two years of work with Kullak, he made his Berlin orchestral début with Mendelssohn's Second Piano Concerto in D minor. The following year an eighteen-year-old Scharwenka joined the faculty of Kullak's Academy.

The young pianist, like all musicians of his day, worked at composition. It was in 1869 that he sealed his fate as a composer, publishing a set of Five Polish National Dances, Op. 3, No.1, in E flat minor. Dance No. 1 would instantly become so famous that Scharwenka feared that its popularity would destroy his destiny as a composer. He was right. Although he was prolific in many forms, the Op. 3, No. 1 was nicknamed "That fatal Polish Romp" and, like Rakhmaninov's Prelude Op. 3, No. 2, and Sinding's Rustle of Spring, the composers sold them for a flat fee, thus depriving themselves of royalties. By Scharwenka's first American tour, it was estimated that in the United States alone, he could have earned over ninety thousand dollars from its sale. As we reach the new millennium, even those 'fatal' three minutes of music are fast disappearing from consciousness as amateur piano playing has all but disappeared.

Scharwenka developed into a dashing and charming man, who showed himself to be an amiable colleague. During the years he was teaching for Kullak, an American girl from Mississippi named Amy Fay was in Berlin studying with Kullak. In her valuable book Music Study in Germany, she describes her affection for Scharwenka, possibly under the spell of his Polish Dance. She writes:

"Scharwenka is very handsome. He is a Pole, and is very proud of his nationality. And, indeed, there is something interesting and romantic about being a Pole. The very name conjures up thoughts of revolutions, conspiracies, bloody executions, masked balls, and of course, grace, wit and beauty! Scharwenka certainly sustains the traditions of his race as far as the latter qualifications are concerned. I never talked with him, as I have but a bowing acquaintance with him, so I don't know what sort of a mind he has, but I find myself looking at him and saying to myself, with a certain degree of satisfaction, "He is a Pole." Why I should have this feeling, I know not, but I seem to be proud of knowing Poles! - Scharwenka has a clear olive complexion, oval face, hazel eyes (I think) and a mass of brown silky hair which he wears long, and which falls about his head in a most picturesque and attractive fashion. He always presides over the piano at the orchestral lessons in the conservatory on Sunday mornings... When concertos are performed he accompanies. He has a delightful serenity of manner, and sits there with quiet dignity, his back to the windows, and the light striking through his fluffy hair. He plays beautifully and composes after Chopin's manner."

During the 1870s, Scharwenka solidified his pianistic career, married and started a family. His first piano concerto in B flat minor, a work much praised by Liszt, received its première in 1877, less then two years after Von Bülow first performed Tchaikovsky's concerto in B flat minor. It is a marvellous score, brimming with exciting material. Earl Wild revived the concerto in the late 1960s with considerable success, recording it for RCA.

Scharwenka, performed this, and eventually all of his four concertos, throughout Europe, England, The United States and Canada. In Vienna, the thirty-year-old virtuoso played his first concerto in 1880 under the redoubtable Hans Richter, and, while in the capital he was honoured with the title of "chamber virtuoso" to the imperial court of Austria. Eduard Hanslick, Vienna's major critic, called Scharwenka "a totally outstanding pianist, dazzling but without charlatanry. The force of his octave playing, the easy, sure flight of his passage work, the lucid delicacy of his ornaments, and the melodic flow of his chained trills, can hardly be bettered by anyone else."

After lengthy tours, Scharwenka decided to open his own conservatory, an establishment that in subsequent years was to rival his old master Kullak's Piano Academy. This was late in 1891, around that time in Berlin he organized a chamber series at the Singakademie. Some time later in that city he conducted a group of orchestral concerts which included such novelties as Liszt's Dante Symphony and Berlin's first complete hearing of the Berlioz Requiem with Crown Prince Wilhelm in the audience, who showered Scharwenka with praise.

It was time to conquer America, and, late in 1890, he arrived only weeks before Paderewski, who caused a sensation. In January 1891, Scharwenka, under the baton of Anton Siedl, played his first concerto and Beethoven's Emperor to a packed house at the Metropolitan Opera. From there he went on to perform at the White House and continued across the continent with ever-mounting acclaim, always pleasing the crowds with the inevitable Polish Dance. Scharwenka fell in love with the New World and decided to settle in New York where he shrewdly opened the Scharwenka Conservatory of Music, which was modelled "in every particular" on his Berlin enterprise. In 1898, after seven years in America, he took up residence in Berlin once more, continuing his concert appearances in the United States until 1913. The First World War prevented Scharwenka from returning to live in America. One of the highlights of his American concerts occurred in 1910 when a desperately ill Gustav Mahler conducted him in a performance of his fourth concerto. The year before, Mahler had conducted Rakhmaninov in the Russian's third concerto, and both Scharwenka and Rakhmaninov were deeply impressed by Mahler's incontestable greatness as a conductor.

After the war, Scharwenka, who had been inundated with a plethora of honours, continued to compose, but his musical idiom, at the time of his death on 8 December 1924, was considered old-fashioned. (He died in the same year as Puccini, Busoni, and Fauré.)

In the third edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music, H. V. Hamilton wrote, "... as a pianist, Xaver Scharwenka was renowned above all his other qualifications for the beautiful quality of his tone. If he was a specialist as interpreter of one composer rather than another, it was of Chopin... but of the other great masters his readings were always grand and musicianly, while to hear him play a waltz of Strauss was as dance - inspiring as the magic bells of Papageno."

Scharwenka is a composer that one can spend many delightful hours with. His music is outgoing, crisp, finely crafted and sane, altogether the manifestation of a man and artist who was comfortable with himself and the world.

The Music

Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1
The so-called 'Military' Polonaise is splendid in its pomp, chivalry and lean muscularity. Dedicated to Chopin's faithful friend Julian Fontana, the Polonaise was composed in October 1838, and published in December 1840.

Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4
This languid mazurka opens as plaintively as it ends, with soft chords in the left hand for three bars, pursuing a vague triplet in bar four. In shaping his mazurka theme, Chopin uses more aristocratic and decorative figuration than usual. The trio is earthier, producing an almost grating quality. A marvellous unison passage leads back to the main theme.

The Maiden's Wish (Chopin - Liszt)
An early Chopin song comprising a simple and fetching mazurka, which Liszt made into a highly effective piano piece beloved by Rakhmaninov, Hofmann, and generations of pianists since its composition. The song itself was published posthumously in Chopin's canon as Op. 74, No. 1.

Nocturne in C major, Op. 37, No. 2
The main theme in euphonious thirds and sixths gives the piece a Venetian barcarolle flavour. The second theme's change in colour has at least in Paderewski's hands, a touch of tragic languor. The nocturne is entirely sensuous.

Waltz in A flat major, Op. 42
Composed in the spring of 1840, and published in June 1840, the A flat waltz with its long, opening trill invites us to dance. The opening theme has a suave lilt, composed in double time, with the triple time of the waltz in the left hand. Schumann sensed its aristocratic refinement, and wrote that it "should be danced to..." only by "countesses at least." The coda concludes the piece at a blistering pace.

Ballade No. 3 in A flat major, Op. 47
The third Ballade is the essence of charm and warmth, with a sense of irony surrounding the second subject. This subject becomes a development section, hailed as "one of the most powerful Chopin ever composed," says Allan Rawsthorne "... one is quite staggered to look back at its winsome origins." The A flat Ballade was composed in 1841.

Étude in G flat major, Op. 10, No. 5
The popular Black Key étude remains a healthy technical test which uses an exquisitely designed figuration for the right hand on the black keys of the keyboard.

Étude in G flat major, Op. 25, No.9
This is the Butterfly étude, not called such by Chopin, yet a rather apt title which has stuck. Good wrist octaves and endurance are necessary for the projection of this puckish creation.

My Joy (Chopin - Liszt) Op 74, No. 12
Here we have an example of Liszt's art of transcription in a nocturne of exquisite beauty. Of Chopin's seventeen songs, Liszt transcribed six entitling them 'Six Chants Polonais'.

Scherzo in C sharp minor, Op. 39
The tense and tightly constructed third Scherzo was begun at Majorca in January 1839 and finished later in the year. Its exhausting coda rises to emotional heights, bringing this soaring masterwork to a rhetorical conclusion.

Mazurka in B flat minor, Op. 24, No. 4
The finest and most elaborate of the four mazurkas of the Op. 24 set. It is a complex work, its structure being A B A C D A with coda.

Valse Brillante in A flat major, Op. 34, No. 1
There is such sparkling life throughout that it feels as though it was improvised at a Dionysian revel. The colouring is delightful throughout and Chopin is entirely happy in this true ballroom creation.

Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 31
A very difficult work, asking for great depth of tone and a variety of technical means. Schumann compared it to a Byronic poem "... so overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt.

© 1998 David Dubal
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Unauthorised copying, public performance and broadcasting of this recording prohibited.