Impromptu No. 2 in F-sharp, Op. 36: Merely a “Drawing-Room Trifle?”

bkr — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:45:07 +0000

For years one of the knocks on Chopin’s music is that he was a “ladies’ composer,” spinning out his piano pieces for the sighing, swooning denizens of Parisan salons, the result being that his remarkable compositions were often trivialized or marginalized.

According to the Cambridge Companion to Chopin, the composer hated the association:

“Chopin enjoyed elegant feminine company, but he had harsh views of the fawning of his ‘adoring women.’ He himself used the phrase ‘music for the ladies’, but unhappily he meant it disparagingly. Another association with the salon was the ’sentimental drawing room composer” – the ’superficial genius’ – and the appellation was encouraged by a self-imposed limitation of meidum, but the connotations of small forms, and by the description titles assigned to his music by publishers…”

One publisher in particular who drew Chopin’s ire was a London-based German entrepreneur named Christian Rudolph Wessel. As you can see by the cover page, above, (courtesy of the fantastic Chopin Early Editions site at the University of Chicago) the publisher issued Chopin’s marvelous Impromptu No. 2 in a series he called “Les Agrémans au Salon” — loosely translated as “Drawing-Room Trifles.” With “friends” like that….

Nowadays, Chopin’s Impromptus are a robust staple of the concert hall. Hear pianist Noel McRobbie perform Chopin’s Impromptu No. 2 in F-sharp Major, Op. 36, in a concert performance at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.

Download the sheet music from the Piano Society web site.

Impromptu in A-flat, Op. 29 No. 1

bkr — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:20:43 +0000

Today the Chopin Project spotlight falls on Russian-born Michigan pianist Olga Kleiankina, performing the First Impromptu (in A-flat, Op. 29, No. 1) by Chopin. By its very title “Impromptu” is supposed to mean just that — just a perky, playful little ditty that Fryderyk would dash off at the keyboard without a lot of forethought or consideration. The reality is, of course, anything but that! Chopin’s Impromptus are eternally popular, and devilishly difficult to pull off. Olga Kleiankina adds, “I felt a lot of pressure preparing for these concerts and was more than a little anxious. But the audiences were very warm, and it turned out to be such a pleasure. Even though I didn’t happen to play any major works, (many of them were almost unknown, in fact!), I came to love all my pieces, and I felt the audience did too. Even though they were miniatures, I felt that each one was perfectly organized from the very inside – in a way, a microcosmos….part of the transcendental world of Chopin’s imagination.”

Hear pianist Olga Kleiankina play this Impromptu in A-flat, Op. 29, No. 1 before an appreciative Ann Arbor audience.

And read more about the Impromptus on Chopinmusic.net

The Chopin Project » Impromptus

Impromptu No. 2 in F-sharp, Op. 36: Merely a “Drawing-Room Trifle?”

Impromptu in A-flat, Op. 29 No. 1