How did Chopin play – vol. 4

One of the most mysterious, yet remarkably frequently repeated in memories, features of Chopin’s pianism was ‘singing on the piano’ – the composer, a passionate opera and bel canto vocal style from an early age, was said to have been able to make the piano notes sound under his fingers not as if they were being produced by the mechanical hammer-struck keys, but as if a melody flowed from the instrument, as flexible and expressive as the human voice. Chopin instilled the same principle – to play so that the piano sings – in his students. As Maurycy Karasowski recounts: ‘The best way to attain naturalness in performance in general, in Chopin’s view, was to listen frequently to Italian singers, among whom there were some very remarkable artists in Paris at the time. He always held up as an example to pianists their broad and simple style, the ease with which they used their voices and the remarkable sustaining powers which this ease gave them.’

Wilhelm von Lenz wrote down the words of Chopin himself: ‘As regards style, one should follow that of Pasta, of the great Italian school of singing.’ (Giuditta Pasta, a famous mezzo-soprano of her time, was Vincenzo Bellini’s muse.) The Master’s words to Vera Rubio, as relayed by Frederick Niecks, are also often quoted in this context: ‘“You must sing if you wish to play”; and he made her take lessons in singing’; and the tip given by Emilie von Gretsch: ‘You have to sing with your fingers.’

Kamila Stępień-Kutera