Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 995 pages of information about Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete.

Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 995 pages of information about Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete.

  1.  Andante suivi de la 3ieme Ballade, par Chopin.

  2.  Felice Donzella, air de Dessauer.

  3.  Suite de Nocturnes, Preludes et Etudes, par Chopin.

  4.  Divers fragments de Handel, chante par Madame Viardot-
  Garcia.

  5.  Solo pour Violoncello, par M. Franchomme.

  6.  Nocturne, Preludes, Mazurkas et Impromptu.

  7.  Le Chene et le Roseau, chante par Madame Viardot-Garcia,
  accompagne par Chopin.

Maurice Bourges, who a week later reports on the concert, states more particularly what Chopin played.  He mentions three mazurkas in A flat major, B major, and A minor; three studies in A flat major, F minor, and C minor; the Ballade in A flat major; four nocturnes, one of which was that in F sharp minor; a prelude in D flat; and an impromptu in G (G flat major?).  Maurice Bourges’s account is not altogether free from strictures.  He finds Chopin’s ornamentations always novel, but sometimes mannered (manierees).  He says:  “Trop de recherche fine et minutieuse n’est pas quelquefois sans pretention et san froideur.”  But on the whole the critique is very laudatory.  “Liszt and Thalberg excite, as is well known, violent enthusiasm; Chopin also awakens enthusiasm, but of a less energetic, less noisy nature, precisely because he causes the most intimate chords of the heart to vibrate.”

From the report in the “France musicale” we see that the audience was not less brilliant than that of the first concert:—­

...Chopin has given in Pleyel’s hall a charming soiree, a fete peopled with adorable smiles, delicate and rosy faces, small and well-formed white hands; a splendid fete where simplicity was combined with grace and elegance, and where good taste served as a pedestal to wealth.  Those ugly black hats which give to men the most unsightly appearance possible were very few in number.  The gilded ribbons, the delicate blue gauze, the chaplets of trembling pearls, the freshest roses and mignonettes, in short, a thousand medleys of the prettiest and gayest colours were assembled, and intersected each other in all sorts of ways on the perfumed heads and snowy shoulders of the most charming women for whom the princely salons contend.  The first success of the seance was for Madame George Sand.  As soon as she appeared with her two charming daughters [daughter and cousin?], she was the observed of all observers.  Others would have been disturbed by all those eyes turned on her like so many stars; but George Sand contented herself with lowering her head and smiling...

This description is so graphic that one seems to see the actual scene, and imagines one’s self one of the audience.  It also points out a very characteristic feature of these concerts—­ namely, the preponderance of the fair sex.  As regards Chopin’s playing, the writer remarks that the genre of execution which aims at the imitation of orchestral effects suits neither Chopin’s organisation nor his ideas:—­

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Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.