The Chopin Project » Noel McRobbie

Cantabile in B-flat, KK 1230 (1834) – A Chopin Rarity

bkr — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:21:00 +0000

“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…

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.

Mazurka in C Major, KK 1225-6 (1833)

bkr — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:04:30 +0000

“In his Mazurkas, you get to know the very soul of Poland and Chopin never forgot his home land or the poor farmers singing the Mazurkas during the time of harvest.” All right, the Piano Society’s prose on Chopin’s 58 Mazurkas may be a bit purple, but it does appear that the Mazurkas are close to Chopin’s Polish soul. Esteemed pianist and scholar Charles Rosen has also declared the Mazurkas as Chopin’s “R & D Lab” – where some of the composer’s boldest harmonic experiments can be found.

Although this sprightly and march-like Mazurka in C major dates from Chopin’s younger years, (see this posting to discover what the “KK” designation means), it wasn’t published until 1870. The original published score (above) comes from the excellent Chopin Early Editions site maintained by the University of Chicago.

Hear pianist Noel McRobbie perform Chopin’s Mazurka No. 56 in C major in concert at the University of Michigan’s Britton Recital Hall.