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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
March 17, 2016
"Music was his language, the divine tongue through which he expressed a whole realm of sentiments that only the select few can appreciate...The muse of his homeland dictates his songs, and the anguished cries of Poland lend to his art a mysterious, indefinable poetry which, for all those who have truly experienced it, cannot be compared to anything else."
Franz Liszt was right: the music of Chopin really is like nothing else. Everthing about Chopin — his dislike of performing in public, his entanglement with Georges Sand, his tragically early death from tuberculosis — makes him the Romantic Artist par excellence. Yet, even without any knowledge of the circumstances of his all-too-brief life, it is clear that his music reveals, as arguably no other composer has, the very soul of the piano itself.
What makes this even more remarkable is that the instrument Chopin knew was still under development; the double escapement was invented in 1821, the first full iron frame in 1843, although that was in the USA and the sostenuto pedal only in 1844, a mere five years before Chopin's death.
Most important, though, is the sheer emotional depth of Chopin's music: as Oscar Wilde remarked, "after playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I have never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own".
Janina Fialkowska's recital on Thursday fully justified every one of the superlative that have been showered on her over the last four decades. From the opening bars of the Polonaise-Fantasie — bold, dramatic chords interspersed with some of the most exquisitely beautiful tone-colours it has ever been my good fortune to witness in the concert hall — she put nary a finger wrong.
Perhaps even more impressive was her sense of rubato, the undoubted sine qua non of great Chopin playing; Fialkowska's rubato was so eminently natural it seemed to spring directly from the music, rather than being imposed by the performer.
The Nocturne Op.9 No.3 was imbued with a delicious lilt, the Impromptu No.3 possessed a remarkable freshness and feeling of spontaneity. Two waltzes followed; Op.60 No.2 was wonderfully contemplative and inner-directed, showing the remarkable depths of which the form is capable — in the hands of a Chopin. Op.42 was rhapsodic and playful.
Some of Chopin's greatest music is to be found in his Ballades, a form which he essentially created. Fialkowska's tremendous account of the last of the four displayed a strong sense of narrative drive. In her hands, Chopin reverses Shakespeare: this is a tale told by a genius, full of sound and fury, quite definitely signifying something.
The Scherzo No.4 had power combined with delicacy and was followed by two of the Op.28 Preludes: the torrential No.14, one of the shortest, and the famous "Raindrop" Prelude, No.15, the longest of the set, with its extraordinary central section: "but Death is here, in the shadows", to quote Alfred Cortot.
The group of three Op.50 Mazurkas provided a delectable interlude before the mighty Scherzo No.1 brought the recital to a tempestuous close.
Of course Fialkowska gave us an encore and of course, as she said, "I'm hardly going to play Shostakovich".
My money was on the "Revolutionary" étude, but I would have lost the bet as she gave us the "Minute" Waltz — actually, she said, it was "a minute and twenty-seven seconds" — a dizzying performance that would surely have defeated anyone even considering dancing to it.
Except, perhaps, a whirling dervish. It was a playful note on which to end.
For almost two hours I sat transfixed and would not have wanted to be anywhere else. A truly memorable evening's musicmaking.
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