Friedman on Chopin
About 30 yrs ago, I edited all the works of chopin. For a long time, the german musical critique was regarded as the touchstone. Because of this, plenty of mistakes were caused involving anything that was not German music. For instance, very few people outside of England have heard about the English composer Purcell, who in my opinion is as great as Bach or Beethoven.
Owing to the same german critique, a great number of people conceived the wrong idea that chopin is a drawing room composer.
As I pointed out in the forward of the edition of his waltzes, Chopin was a prophet who anticipated things for the future, which only started to be realized about half a century after his death. In other words, we find in Chopin germs of Wagner, the later russian school and Debussy ..
Chopin has in his pallete, as many epic, dramatique elements, sentimental and romantic ones and is an unsurpassable example of what Petronius used to call arbiter elegantiae.
The opinon of the contemporary musical critics on the so-called matter-of-fact music, or rational or constructive music is in my opinion, wrong .. of course. The fact that Chopin remains unique in his music that nothing of his music perished after a period of hundred yrs and his compositions are gaining understanding and admiration now; all proves that Chopin is more vital than scores of musical messiahs who came and have gone.
From the purely pianistic point of view, Chopin revolutionized the entire technique. He discovered and exhausted the modern piano.
So liszt for example, considered as greatest pianist of his time and composer as well, recreated only a great number of external sounds from piano transcriptions, arranging orchestral works or vocal compositions in piano translations. Full of admiration for the violin technique of paganini, Liszt re-arranged his compositions for piano. Chopin, on the other hand, extracts from the piano itself, all sounds, aromas and colors in a masterful unsurpassable manner.
The technique of the modern french composers such as Debussy or Ravel is a sort of alloy of the art of old clavecinicts and Chopin. The same may be said of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff in Russia, and Szymanowksi in Poland.
Chopin is essentially Polish in his art of composition; not only because he wrote mazurkas and polonaises but also because his polish spirit dominates his ballades, preludes, scherzos or etudes.
Ignaz Friedman for the radio
