How did Chopin play – vol. 10

In each stage of the Competition, pianists complement the recital program with optional pieces – Chopin’s scherzos, for example, provide excellent scope for performance. Thanks to the meticulous notes of Chopin’s student, Wilhelm von Lenz, we know a few of the composer’s own tips on interpreting the Scherzo in B flat minor, Op. 31: ‘Right from the first bar there was a problem: the repeated triplet group A–B flat–D flat (bars 1–2), so innocent-seeming, could never be played to Chopin’s satisfaction. “It must be a question,” taught Chopin; and it was never played questioningly enough, never soft enough, never round enough, as he said, never sufficiently weighted. “It must be a house of the dead”, he once said. […In his lessons] I saw Chopin dwell at length on this bar and again at each of its reappearances. “That’s the key to the whole piece,” he would say. Yet the triplet group is generally snatched or swallowed. Chopin was just as exacting over the simple quaver accompaniment of the cantilena [second theme, bars 65ff], as well as the cantilena itself: “You should think of [the singer Giuditta] Pasta, of Italian song! – not of French Vaudeville,” he said one day with more than a touch of irony.’

We also owe Lenz a short note on the Scherzo in C sharp minor, Op. 39: ‘It is dedicated to [Adolph] Gutmann, and it was probably with his prize-fighter’s fist in mind that the bass chord in bar 6 was thought out, a chord that no left can take – least of all that of Chopin, who arpeggiated it on his loght-touch, narrow-keyed, Pleyel.’

Kamila Stępień-Kutera