CHOPIN PIANO SOLO - BOISCHIO

CHOPIN PIANO SOLO ( CVLD216 )

Performer : Alberto Boischio

Tracks

1) Ballata in sol min. op. 23, N.1 (1831) 9’23”
2) Mazurka in sol min. op. 67, N.2 (1849) 2’09”
3) Mazurka in la min. op. 67, N.4 (1846) 3’24”
4) Notturno in fa diesis min. op. 48, N.2 (1842) 7’49”
5) Notturno in do diesis min. / op. postuma (1830) 3’47”
Sonata in si min. op. 58 (1844)
6) - allegro maestoso 9’11”
7) - Scherzo, molto vivace 2’37”
8) - Largo 8’13”
9) - Presto non tanto, agitato 5’14”
Total duration 51'56

Notes

One hundred and fifty years after his death, is there still something to discover about Chopin? As for his biography, I would say no: even the clouds that weighed on his ancestors have been swept away by meticulous archive research, even his father's earthly life has been entirely reconstructed, and, unless unknown memories emerge, locked away in the archives of families who were close to Chopin, it does not seem that the still obscure sides of his life can be illuminated. His relationships with his contemporaries, and especially with George Sand, have been thoroughly investigated, finally returning, after a century and more of tales, to what emerges from the documents. Critical studies have still opened, in my opinion, three great lines of investigation: Technique, the Reconciliation of Microcosm and Macrocosm, the Feeling of the Fatherland.

Chopin's revolutionary technique was born in connection with a significant evolution in piano construction: between 1820 and 1830, approximately, the instrument acquired a frame with metal plates and tension bars that reinforced the traditional wooden frame, acquired thicker and more taut strings, more robust hammers covered in felt instead of leather, and heavier mechanics. The classical technique, codified by Muzio Clementi, did not allow the pianist to develop all the sound potential of the romantic piano, and attempts to preserve it by adapting it to the changed characteristics of the instrument were unsuccessful. Chopin instead created a technique that rejected some of the fundamental postulates of the classical tradition (such as the equality of the fingers and the action limited to the fingers and the hand) and discovered previously unknown possibilities of touch.

Some conservative critics of Chopin's time considered the Etudes op.10 unplayable, since if approached with Clementi's technique they were effectively unplayable. But in the Etudes op.10 and op.25 a new and very wide-ranging technique is invented, which represents a definitive acquisition for the piano. Later, in the Three New Etudes, Chopin addresses, so to speak, the birth of sound on the piano, that is, the limit that separates sound and silence, opening a field that will be explored in depth, fifty years later, by the French Symbolists. Now, on Chopin's technique, studied on the texts and pianos with which he was familiar, there is in my opinion still much to be said.

The most complex form created by classical music is the sonata, which in its most typical moments brings together four different forms: the bitemmatic and tripartite allegro, the bitemmatic song, the scherzo with trio, the rondo. This great form stands as an insurmountable bulwark in front of the composers who appear on the scene around 1830.

Schubert, who died in 1828, was and will be considered for the whole century a master of small forms, and the romantic composers tended to make use of small forms and to take up and develop, independently of each other, the forms of the classical sonata: for example, Chopin's ballad derives from the bithematic and tripartite allegro, Chopin's scherzo derives from Beethoven's “scherzo with trio”.

Another example of the development of a traditional form, the bithematic one, is constituted by some nocturnes, which expand the dimension and poetic meaning of the salon dimension of John Field. Chopin also tackles, albeit by exception, the great classical form; but like Schumann, he organizes the small forms in cycles, creating the polyptych. In this sense, some groups of mazurkas and waltzes should be considered, but above all the Preludes op.28, in which the aphoristic form, the tripartite monothematic form and the song form are inserted in a complex and rigidly structured scheme a priori. Many studies have been done on the Preludes, even recently; but it does not seem to me that the "secret", that the enigma of this absolute masterpiece has been revealed.

The third key point in Chopin's poetics concerns his non-belonging to the Central European culture that had dominated the field of piano literature during the classical period. Son of a Polish woman and a man from Lorraine who moved to Poland at a very young age, Chopin speaks Polish, is culturally educated in Warsaw, and is the first composer who achieves international fame by systematically using stylistic elements belonging to the musical tradition of his people that are grafted onto stylistic elements of the lingua franca, of the European "koinè".

The exotic had already appeared in Central European music for some time. But for Chopin the exotic is not a moment of the picturesque: he does not occasionally taste the exotic: he is the exotic, and the culture of his land invests European structures, transforming them. From the Scherzo op.20 onwards, a musical scale characteristic of Poland is compared with European harmony: an agreement is born that will make theorists discuss for the whole century.

In his years in Paris, Chopin would constantly return to this, we might say, unusual chemical reaction; and in this way, instead of creating the national work according to the intentions of the musicians who had sympathized with the Kosciuszko revolt in 1794 and the insurrection of 1830-31, he would profoundly influence the course of Central European music up to decadentism. And here too, despite the efforts of biographers and critics, something obscure remains.

What will 1999 bring us? Something new or a lazy revival of fairy tales?
Piero Rattalino

The recording was made in Schio in the Church of San Francesco on 24, 25, 26 September 1998, using for the first time in Italy the new 24 bit / 96 Khz high-density digital technology.

Production: Velut Luna
Executive producer: Marco Lincetto
Musical producer: Maria Grazia Bambini
Recording & Mastering engineer: Marco Lincetto
Editing engineer: Fabio Framba
Design: the image
Photo: Ilenco Tracmot
Marketing: Francesco Pesavento
Sales Manager: Moreno Danieli & Patrizia Pagiaro
Press Agent: Emanuela Dalla Valle
World Wide Contacts: Cristiana Dalla Valle