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Chopin: Etudes and Rondos 77:10
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Album Notes
Chopin's Etudes Opus 10 mark the heginning of the modern school of piano playing.
His contemporaries __ exponents of the style brillant vogue of the early 1800s such as Hummel, Moscheles, Weher, and Czerny __ wrote complex and varied sequences
of scales and arpeggios, which were nonetheless based on the Classical piano
technique of Mozart and Beethoven, itself already based on the harpsichord
techniques of the Baroque period, although they pushed it to the limits of
playability. The hands stayed in the classic five-note position, the thumb
rarely ventured onto the black keys, and leaps over a tenth were hard to find.
At the same time, the piano had evolved enormously, from Mozart's delicate wooden
structure into one capable of holding its own in a major concert hall, with
increased carrying power and an extended tonal palette. The piano was ready
and waiting for the one who would crown it the "king of instruments."
From the beginning, Chopin's playing displayed an acute sensibility to the new
tonal potentials of the piano; he was the first composer who listened to the
instrument and designed a technique specifically for its strengths, most notably
taking into account the reinforced sympathetic vibrations of the strings and
sounding board, which demanded a more judicious use of the harmonic overtone
series. Unlike his predecessors closed chords and dense passagework, Chopin's
arpeggios are wide in the bass and closed only in the treble (perfectly
exemplified in the Etudes Nos. I and II), compounding the natural resonance
of the instrument.
As with the studies of his contemporaries, each Etude focuses on a specific
technical detail, transparently evident in the listening. But in contrast to
the emotionally meaningless physical exercises of a Czerny, the development
of a Chopin Etude is guided by the musical demands of the figurations,
inspired at every moment by the physical and aural qualities of the instrument.
In this way, Chopin elevated the Etude, as he did with the Mazurka and the
Polonaise, into the realm of abstract music.
The true importance of the Etudes lies not in their technical originality
or difficulty, but in the tightly interwoven correspondence between the
technique and the musical expression; Chopin did not believe, as certain
pillars of the Romantic movement were to proclaim, in the separation of
intellect and emotion. The impact of the Etudes was immediate and far-reaching.
Almost all the major pianist/composers since Chopin have followed his example
in writing Etudes __ Liszt, Schumann, Debussy, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, etc. More
indirectly, the Etudes showed the way to a fantastic world of technical and
expressive possibilities at the piano. Liszt was the first to grasp their
importance, and their direct influence on his own writing is evident in the
comparison between the skeletal first versions of his concert etudes and their
fleshed-out form following his meeting with Chopin.
A detailed inventory of the Etudes is hardly necessary anymore, their importance
in the repertoire having been established for over one hundred fifty years;
today's teenagers toss off the entire set at piano competitions! A few specific
details are worth noting, however. They were evidently conceived as an integral
work, linked by a cycle of fifths and related major and minor keys; the set
begins and ends in C, pivoting around a pair of Etudes in F major and minor
and meandering as far away tonally as C-flat major. The members of the series
from Etude No. 5 through No.9 are linked through identical initial and final notes.
Interestingly, the technical problems that the Opus 10 Etudes attack are not
those that obsessed contemporaries: trills, parallel octaves, thirds and sixths,
etc. Those would be addressed more fully in Opus 25.
Opus 10 was a distillation of what made Chopin's approach unique, a pianism
that contrasted sharply from the reigning style. His technique first of all
was very personal, created for his particular hand structure __ long fingers,
allowing an expanded stretch, and splayed outward towards the two extremes
of the keyboard. His technique, and especially that of his early, style
brilliant period, delimited by the Etudes and including the Rondos, is
peculiarly wide-spread and anchored by a thumb that was as much at home
on the black keys as on the white. There is surprisingly little use of the
traditional hand-over-thumb rotation for arpeggios, but rather an ingenious
use of a "crawling" technique that nevertheless spans the entire keyboard.
In order to better appreciate both the technical inventiveness of the Etudes
as well as their expressive intensity, there is no better foil than the Rondos.
If the former can be considered technical exercises elevated to an abstract
musical form, the latter are an abstract musical form used as a platform for
high virtuosic display. They have no pretensions beyond the simple, joyful
exploration of the piano. Only the Variations can equal the Rondos in that
regard.
The fact that Chopin wrote four Rondos __ a mystic number in the Chopin oeuvre
that applies as well to the Ballades, the Scherzi and the Impromptus __ makes
their study all the more appealing. In addition, a Rondo was Chopin's choice for
his introduction to the musical world, Opus 1. Although it is the work of a
fifteen-year-old, there is already a clear sense of maturity, and a definite
mastery of the technical aspects of the keyboard writing, despite the lack
of what we now recognize as Chopin's language. The work certainly bears the
major traits of style brilliant, which obsessed the young composer: quick,
light ornamentations, flowing arpeggios, dazzling sequences of sixteenth
notes. Chopin gives special attention to the harmonious shape of his melodies,
which saves the work from being only a meaningless showcase.
The second Rondo, a Ia mazur, combines Chopin's technical explorations with
his search for a distinctly nationalistic language. The insistent presence
of the raised fourth degree and the constantly varying rhythmic motifs,
characteristic of Polish folk music, are perfectly integrated into the
technical figurations, many of which would be developed into the Etudes,
notably the extended use of the black keys (No.5), the parallel writing
of the two hands (No.8) and the particularly active left hand (No.12).
Considerably more ambitious in its structural development, Chopin's personal
style and humor are unmistakable here.
The Rondo in C major dates from around the same period as the Rondo a la mazur,
although certain doubts about its success kept Chopin from seeking its publication.
The slow, operatic introduction reminds one of its later cousin in E-flat, and
the contrapuntal writing in the Rondo makes the material unusually rich. Although
the tempo is fast, there are certain similarities in texture to the Etudes Nos. 3
and 6, as well as passagework later found in Nos. 8 and 12. Chopin later rewrote
this Rondo for two pianos and performed it with friends on a few occasions. The
two-piano version is structurally identical, the writing being equally distributed
between the two players and healthily fortified, with an attractive cantilena line
added as an accompaniment in two passing sections.
The last of the Rondos was written in Paris, most probably at the behest of his
publisher for something destined for the large public. Contemporary with the more
serious Etudes as well as the dramatic First Scherzo and the first sketches of the
First Ballade, it shows that Chopin could nevertheless revert back to his style
brilliant days and make a grand spectacle. An imposing introduction precedes the
Rondo proper, impressive in its large harmonic berth and chromatic daring, and
containing some of Chopin's most virtuosic writing, in which one hears traces of
Etudes Nos. I, 4, 5, 7, and 8.
- FREDERIC CHIU
harmonia mundi usa, 2037 Granville Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90025 (c)(p) 1997
Recording: April 9-I0, and November 4-5, 1996, Skywalker Sound, a division of
LucasArts Entertainment Company, Nicasio, CA
Executive Producer: Robina G. Young
Engineer: Brad Michel
Editing: Paul F. Witt
Piano: Yamaha
Cover: Frederic Chiu, photograph by William Mercer MeLeod
Bookdet design: Steven Lindberg
Recorded and produced in the USA
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