Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog

Reporting from Warsaw — The stirring strains of Frederic Chopin’s music are reverberating across the world as music lovers celebrate the composer’s 200th birthday this year — from the château of his French lover to Egypt’s pyramids and even into space.
But nowhere do celebrations carry the powerful sense of national feeling as they do in Poland, the land of his birth, where his heroic, tragic piano compositions are credited with capturing the country’s soul.

Poland is going all out to display its best “product,” as officials bluntly put it, staging bicentennial concerts and other events in and around Warsaw, the city where the composer — known here as Fryderyk Chopin — spent the first half of his life.
“Fryderyk Chopin is a Polish icon,” said Andrzej Sulek, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. “In Polish culture there is no other figure who is as well-known in the world and who represents Polish culture so well.”
Perhaps nothing better conveys Chopin’s importance — literally — than his heart. It is preserved like a relic in an urn of alcohol in a Warsaw church.
Just before his death at age 39 of what was probably tuberculosis, Chopin, fearful of being buried alive, asked that his heart be separated from his body and returned to his beloved homeland. His body is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where Chopin spent the second half of his life.
Chopin was born in 1810 at a country estate in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French émigré father. Historical sources suggest two possible dates of birth — either February 22, as noted in church records, or March 1, which was mentioned in letters between him and his mother and is considered the more probable date.
Since no one is sure, Poland is marking both. A series of concerts in Warsaw and Zelazowa Wola are taking place over those eight days featuring such world-class musicians as Daniel Barenboim, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman.
Then, a refurbished museum opens in Warsaw on Monday displaying Chopin’s personal letters and musical manuscripts along with a narration of his life.
Celebrations span the globe, from Austria to concerts at Cairo’s pyramids and across Asia.
The astronauts who blasted into orbit on the Endeavor space shuttle February 8 carried with them a CD of Chopin’s music and a copy of a manuscript of his Prelude Opus 28, No. 7 — gifts from the Polish government.

/patrick

The International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg has announced it has discovered two previously unknown compositions written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

“The Department of Research at the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg has identified two works, which have long been in the possession of the Foundation, as compositions of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” the foundation said in a recent statement, without giving any more details.

The two pieces for piano are to presented to the press on August 2. They will be performed by clavichordist Florian Birsak on Mozart’s own fortepiano at the family’s old Salzburg residence.

This latest score is not the only one to have resurfaced in recent years however. Last September, a library in Nantes, in western France, unveiled a hitherto unknown music score by Mozart that had lain in its archive undiscovered for over a century. It was authenticated by the Mozarteum.

In 2006, a year filled with celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Austria’s favourite son, another piano score extremely likely to be the work of young Wolfgang Amadeus was discovered in Salzburg.

In May of last year, experts also identified three mystery musical scores discovered at Poland’s historic Jasna Gora Roman Catholic monastery in southern Poland, as possible Mozart creations.

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Added 20 August 2009:

From NTDTV on August 03, 2009:

Listen to one of the two new pieces performed on harpsichord by Florian Birsak in Salzburg, August 2009:

/patrick

“The other day I heard Chopin improvise at George Sand’s house. It is marvelous to hear Chopin compose in this way: his inspiration is so immediate and complete that he plays without hesitation as if it could not be otherwise.
But when it comes to writing it down and recapturing the original thought in all its details, he spends days of nervous strain and almost terrible despair.”
- Karl Flitsch -

“In 1968, I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in 15 seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered:

In 15 seconds, the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what you want to say in 15 seconds, while in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

His answer lasted exactly 15 seconds and is still the best formulation of the question I know.”
- Frederic Rzewski -

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In the history of Western music, from the medieval until the romantic period, improvisation was an important skill for all composers and keyboard players. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, and many others were celebrated for their ability to improvise.

However, while most of the composed music easily survived in its purest form, written scores, improvised music left nothing but the traces in the minds of its listeners (or, on rare occasions written descriptions such as the above quote by Flitsch). The modern conception of the history of music is probably lacking a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Consequently, in music education today and on the main concert platforms there are often distinct borders between improvising, composing, interpreting and performing, and few “classical” musicians are masters of all four trades.

Many modern jazz pianists are currently widening their musical skills and approaching the area traditionally belonging to art music. Thus, in the future, the distinction between being a “jazz pianist” and a “classical pianist” might be blurrier than it has been, not least since there also seems to be a growing interest in improvisation among classical pianists and piano teachers.

Improvisations in Audition Room

In the Piano Street forum community there is a subset of pianists exploring solo piano improvisation. In an effort to support both them and the historical tradition of keyboard improvisation we have now opened a separate section for improvisations in our Audition Room. Here you can listen to uploaded improvisations, discuss them and, not least, share your own recorded improvisations!

In order to make life easier for you when you listen to these improvisations and to all the other pieces in our Audition Room, we have now added an embedded mp3-player next to all the attached files. Just click the little play button and enjoy!

/nilsjohan

Pianists who begin practicing in childhood have been found to have better developed nerve pathways in parts of their brains. Scientists believe this results in better fine motor coordination.

Most professional pianists begin their careers in early childhood. Very few people can develop their capacities as fully later in life. A research group under the leadership of  Fredrik Ullén, a neuroscientists at the Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden) and an internationally renowned concert pianist, has made a discovery that may help explain why this is so. Their findings are presented in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Using diffusion tensor imaging, the research team investigated effects of piano practicing in childhood, adolescence and adulthood on white matter and found positive correlations between practicing and fiber tract organization in different regions for each age period. For childhood, practicing correlations were extensive and included the pyramidal tract, which was more structured in pianists than in non-musicians. Long-term training within critical developmental periods may thus induce regionally specific plasticity in myelinating tracts.

A clear different was visible when the brains of professional pianists were compared with those of non-musicians, particularly in the “pyramidal pathway,” that governs the work of the fingers at the keyboard.

“Our main finding is a clear effect that can be attributed to practice in early childhood,” says Fredrik Ullén.

The pyramidal pathway can be described as a collection of nerve tracts that travel from the cerebral cortex through the pyramid of the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the spinal cord. It is a part of the brain that develops most during childhood.

“The pyramidal pathway is known to be decisive to sophisticated finger movements,” Fredrik Ullén continues.

His research group found that the white brain matter in the pyramidal pathway becomes well-organized from practicing the piano. White brain matter contains both the nerve fibers myelin, a lipid-containing substance that contributes to the layer of insulation that surrounds a nerve.

Fredrik Ullén believes that development of myelin is stimulated when children practice the piano. This extra insulation enables the impulses to travel faster from the brain down to the fingers.

The researchers also found that the white matter was better developed in the transitions between the areas of the brain that govern hearing and motor control.

Fredrik Ullén states: “This probably affects the coordination between what we hear and what we do.”

This latter increase was not found to be as closely correlated with childhood practicing, probably because these pathways continue to develop in adulthood.

“Generally,” says Fredrik Ullén, “we can state that the effect of every hour of practicing on white brain matter greater earlier in life.”

Ullén hopes to continue by studying a group of pianists who practiced as children but then stopped playing. His objective is to investigate whether the effects on the pyramidal pathways are lifelong effects, or whether they require perseverant lifelong practicing to be maintained.

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PIANIST FREDRIK ULLÉN

Swedish pianist Fredrik Ullén was educated at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, but cites Finnish pianist Liisa Pohjola as being his primary influence. Ullén is a highly skilled virtuoso who specializes in Sorabji, the Stockhausen Klavierstücke, the Ligeti etudes, and other works requiring a high degree of transcendental skill. He also works extensively with living composers such as György Kurtág, Mauricio Kagel, George Flynn and Barnabás Dukay. He has recorded for Pro Piano and Caprice labels, but since 1996 has primarily recorded for Swedish label BIS. Ullén’s large and constantly growing repertoire includes many of the most complex and demanding works in the piano literature, such as Ligeti’s complete piano études, Reger’s Spezial-studien and music by Sorabji. He has a particular interest in creative programming with couplings of new and traditional literature. His solo CDs for BIS Records have without exception been enthusiastically praised by internationally renowned critics and have received an impressive number of prestigious awards and accolades, including the Diapason d’or, CHOC de Le Monde de la Musique, Stern des Monats (FonoForum), Recommandé (Répertoire), and Recomendado (CD Compact). Ullén has performed at a large number of international music festivals, to outstanding critical acclaim (‘an unbelievable pianistic presence’, Schleswig-Holsteinische Landeszeitung, 2001; ‘spectacular’, New YorkTimes, 2001; ‘astonishing precision, stamina, and imagination’, Boston Globe, 2002).

Recordings on BIS

www.fredrikullen.com

/patrick

Not only are piano competitions such as the Van Cliburn YouTube-competition and the Minnesota e-Competition moving out onto the web, but students, music colleges, schools and all music lovers now have the chance to gain inspiration and to learn from master classes given by some of the world’s greatest musicians.

The Masterclass Media Foundation is a charity that is creating a unique archive of master classes, many of which will be available on DVD and as Internet downloads. With an estimated 30-40 hours of master classes issued every year, these will form an invalualbe teaching resource for the present and succeeding generations and a means by which the insights and genius of the world’s great musicians of our time can be shared with students all over the world as well as being preserved for posterity.
http://www.masterclassfoundation.org

Magister Musicae

Founded by Fundacion Albeniz in collaboration with Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía and with project support from the EU cultural funds, some 3000 hours of master classes in English and Spanish (with English subtitles), with some 20 internationally renowned pianists, will be presented, along with master classes with other instrumentalists and conductors.
http://www.magistermusicae.com/magister-musicae/

/patrick