Hi readers! I feel the need to revise this post now that I have more information on the piece presented here. My original post is in plain text. My amendments are in italics.
I recently saw a Twitter post that included a performance of one of Chopin’s works. Titled Largo, it was a piece I was unfamiliar with. Short, a little sentimental. Beautiful. Undeniably Chopin.*
And now the asterisk, the bane of a baseball player’s record, comes into play here. While the style may be undeniably Chopin, the Largo that is so beautiful is a piano arrangement of Handel’s Largo. See the video below.
And had Chopin’s wishes been carried out, we would never have heard it.
Chopin’s final request was that all his unpublished manuscripts be destroyed. However, his mother and sisters intervened; instead, they had Julian Fontana review the manuscripts and put together a posthumous collection. [1]
This may be why Chopin requested that his manuscripts be destroyed. He didn’t want his noodling around, riffing on Handel, to be mixed in with his own work, some of which he may have considered unfinished, or unpolished. Oddly, when I then listened to Handel’s Largo, I remembered it, but didn’t make the connection when I first heard Chopin’s version. Reminds me of my Chopin+performer post, except here we have Handel+Chopin.
Among the rescued pieces are a collection of Polish songs, and a variety of piano pieces, including wonderful nocturnes and waltzes.
Here is Largo, performed by pianist James Rhodes. The tweet reads, “Today I discovered a Chopin piece that I had never heard before. I can’t believe it. It’s only two minutes long, but I LOVE it. His ‘Largo, B109.’ I hope you enjoy it.”
So, apologies to Chopin for not carrying out his wishes, but a thank you for adding a little more beauty to the world. Because Handel in the hands of Chopin is also a wonderful thing.
“I shall not alter a single note,” I answered, “I shall publish the work exactly as it is!”
So said Tchaikovsky after receiving blistering criticism from pianist Nikolai Rubinstein after hearing Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto a few days after the composition was completed. [1] Rubinstein, who is known for debuting Balakirev’s insanely difficult Islamey, [2] deemed the concerto “unplayable” and “vulgar.”
It would appear Tchaikovsky was vindicated. The first piano concerto met with great audience acclaim at its debut in Boston, and has become one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular works. Rubinstein later came around, both playing and conducting the work he once vilified.
Perhaps you have listened to Beethoven’s string quartets, or seen performances, recorded or live. Now, you can see them in a new way.
I have highlighted the work of Stephen Malinowski in previous posts (here, for example). He takes classical works and adds visualizations that reflect various aspects of the music, showing how voices interweave, pitches shift, and more. Malinowski calls them animated graphical scores, and they provide great insights into the musical structure. They can draw attention to aspects of the music you might miss otherwise. They are also mesmerizing.
Malinowski collaborated with the Alexander String Quartet, who performed individual Beethoven string quartet movements that were then given visualizations. Afterwards, they set a spectacular goal: record and visualize all of Beethoven’s string quartets in honor of Beethoven’s upcoming 250th birthday.
Catapulting into Classical 