Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

Abstract

hopin was extremely unwilling to perform before larger audiences and usually displayed his keyboard skills in the cultured circles of aristocratic salens in Paris, where leading figures in the Frei:F> intelligentsia and emigre groups dis-cus-td aesthetic questions relating to painting, litttiture and music and commented on political events abroad. While Mozart and the yo«g Beethoven were primarily seen as entertainers to the higher ranks of society and wert tolerated in their palaces, Chopin was botfi valued as a permanent and invigorating element in similar salons on account of his spatsling showmanship and skill in imitations anc teared because off his biting aphorisms. When, after many entreaties, he was peciaded to sit down at the Erard grand, his playing was, lor all its intimacy and dynamic restraint, of incomparable poetry and vivid-ness. It was characterized by an ethereal power anc passion, radiated, for all his reticence, a hypnotic magic and left behind an impression on all who heard and saw it of what can best be described by the old-fashioned expression "chjste". The keyboard instrument was com¬pletely adequate for his aural sensibility, and since he was under no material pressure to become involved with other genres and larger forms, he left behind no operas or symphonies, no symphonic poems, sacred works or (with the exception of the Sonata for Cello and Piano) chamber music. The only works requir¬ing orchestral instruments in addition to the piano date from his youth and accorded with the custom of the time which demanded, that anyone who wanted to make a name for himself as a pianist must cany in his baggage some works of his own for piano and orchestra. The instrumental material was distributed among the orchestral players wherever he performed and must not be too difficult on account of the lack of rehearsal time. There is no way of determining whether Chopin himself actually wrote the dull and conven¬tional orchestral parts or whether he was helped by his fellow-student Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski; the autograph scores have not survived.