“One is loath to believe that the echo of Chopin’s magic music can ever fall upon unheeding ears.  He may become old-fashioned, but, like Mozart, he will remain eternally beautiful.”

Even for a piece barely more than a minute in length, the “eternally beautiful” Chopin cited by writer and pianist james Huneker (author of the definitive book Chopin: The Man and his Music) is evident in this brief Cantabile.    This little gem often turns up folios and other albums devoted to 19th-century miniatures, though it didn’t actually appear in print until 1931, nearly 100 years after Chopin compoosed it.

Cantabile, after all, is defined as “to sing or play in a sweetly singing manner.”  See if you don’t think that’s exactly what Chopin Project Pianist Noel McRobbie does in this performance…

• Listen to Cantabile in B-flat, KK 1230 (1834) by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download a Public Domain edition of the sheet music for Cantabile in B-flat, KK 1230 (1834) by Fryderyk Chopin

Decades before Maurice Ravel came along, Chopin also found inspiration in the old Spanish dance known as the Bolero, defined as “A Spanish dance and song, in moderate tempo and triple metre, popular at the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, often performed with guitar and castenets.” In fact, the Spanish Bolero was rythmically related to the polonaise of Chopin’s native country, and even Beethoven wrote a Bolero a solo … it’s one of his minor “without Opus” works, WoO 158.

Regardless of origin or inspiration, it’s one of Chopin’s more unusual works, dating from 1833. He tacked on an Introduction in C major that serves as an evocative attention-getter that sets up the uniquely Spanish-Polish Bolero that follows.

Hear pianist Xiaofeng Wu perform Chopin’s Introduction & Bolero in A, Op. 19 in concert at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

• Listen to Introduction & Bolero in A, Op. 19 by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Introduction & Bolero in A, Op. 19 by Fryderyk Chopin

This rare bit of Chopiniana was supposedly written after violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini came through Warsaw in the summer of 1829, a concert we know that Chopin attended. A month later he graduated from the Higher School of Music in Warsaw, where a teacher wrote, “Chopin, Fryderyk: third-year student, amazing capabilities, musical genius.”

Hear pianist Dmitri Vorobiev play these unusual Variations in a Chopin Project concert performance.

• Listen to Variations in A Major, “Souvenir de Paganini” by Fryderyk Chopin
• Download sheetmusic for Variations in A Major, “Souvenir de Paganini” by Fryderyk Chopin

“In Warsaw, when Chopin was growing up, the social scene was extremely active, and anyone who wasn’t sick  would go to dance parties almost every night. And the star of these events was usually Chopin, because he was both a great dancer himself – and he played for all of the other dancers. He would usually improvise at one of these events . . . sitting at the piano and playing for hours, coming up with mazurkas, waltzes, and ecossaises. (pron “eh-koh-SAY”) Nobody dances ecossaises anymore, but these are the types of dances that Chopin would have improvised at a party, and if he really liked it, he’d then go home and write it down.”

Hear Arthur Greene perform Chopin’s Three Ecossaises, Op. 72 (1826)

• Download sheetmusic for Three Ecossaises, Op. 72 by Fryderyk Chopin