Titles

The Piano Sonatas; Frederic Chopin, composer; Leif Ove Adsnes, piano

Sometime, in the first few weeks of summer vacation of 1988, after graduating from SDSU, my new piano teacher from CCM, Mr. M., called me. Hello? “Erik, this is Mr. M. I know that we don’t work together until you arrive in August, but I’d like to know what piano works you would like to prepare over the summer.” Well, do you have any suggestions? “No. I like my students to choose their own repertoire.” I heard a pianist in January play Chopin’s third piano sonata and I really liked it. How ‘bout that one? “Excellent choice. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Procure yourself a copy of Mr. Chopin’s sonatas and get busy.”

I had played some Chopin over the years. As a matter of fact, when I started piano lessons with Dr. P. in March of my junior year in high school, he started me on Bach’s two-part inventions and Chopin’s Etude, Op. 10, No. 3 in E Major. A few years later, I played Mr. Chopin’s Etude, Op. 25, No. 11 in A Minor, called the “Winter Wind” Etude. Barcarole, Op. 60, as well, fell into my repertoire.

Much of the master’s music makes formidable technical demands on the performer. Very little of his output lends itself to beginning or amateur facility. The same can be said of Masters Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. But Chopin sets himself apart. As the consummate Romantic, he plays his life out on his sleeve for the world to see and hear. He has nothing to hide. Indeed, history proclaims him the “Poet of the Piano”, a designation merited by gentle, limber, sometimes even fragile melodies that sanction meticulous attention to nuance and expressive depth as they drape nimbly and pliantly over rigid and powerful rhythmic sequences.

Chopin’s music is very serious. You won’t find much humor there. And, yet, I laugh. Why? Franz Liszt composed “Legend of St. Francis of Paulo, Walking on the Waves”. Robert Schumann wrote “Papillons” or “Butterflies” and “Davidsbundlertanze” or “Dances of the League of King David”. Edvard Grieg penned scores of “Lyric Pieces” with titles like “In My Homeland”, “Little Bird”, “March of the Dwarves”, “Peasant’s Song” and the brilliant “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen”.

To his towering, passionate structures of harmony and song, to his living, breathing sculptures of pianistic sonnets, idylls, threnodies, odes and epics … Frederic Chopin attaches the titles Prelude, Etude, Ballade, Scherzo, Impromptu, Nocturne, Waltz, Mazurka, Polonaise – are you yawning yet – Concerto, Sonata, Ecossaise, Rondo, Trio and Lento. His only composition title that even hints at overt inspiration is the afore-mentioned Barcarole. A barcarole is a boat song; as a matter of fact, a Venitian boat song. In Chopin’s Barcarole, the composer takes the listener on a tour of the canals of Venice via a gondola, and featuring a gondolier. It is Mr. Chopin’s single piece of music whose title implies extra-musical narrative. All other work names suffer from tedious, stodgy and lackluster epithets.

It reminds me of the joke about the pianist who wrote and played his own music. To his artful, beautiful and heartfelt musical creations he would ascribe crass, coarse, tasteless, disgusting and oftentimes blatantly pornographic titles that embarrassed the members of his audiences. One day, while he provided background music at a café, a gentleman approached the piano, sidled up to the pianist/composer and asked “Do you know your fly is down?” To which the pianist declared, “Know it? I wrote it!”

Credits: To the city of Venice, one of my favorite cities in the world. I lament your sinking woes. Keep your head up.