[Today: Artur Rubinstein and Frederic Chopin throw a rave...]
To the modern ear, classical music sounds nothing like dance music, but that’s exactly what most of it was. The mazurka and polonaise, for instance, were Polish folk dances that were all the rage throughout Europe and the United States in the 19th century. Mazurkas are played in a lively triple meter, while polonaises are slower (3/4 time) – but both were composed for solo piano.
Irving Kolodin’s original 1956 liner notes describe the mazurka as “the loud thud of boots striking the ground, followed by their sibilant slide along the polished floor, then the swift springs and sudden bounds, the whirling gyrations and dizzy evolutions, the graceful genuflections and maddening movements.” And even if that sounds like a square description of the happenings inside the Fillmore West in 1968, it at least conveys the idea that people weren’t just sitting around watching the piano player through opera glasses – they were out there moving to this stuff.
Widely considered to be the greatest Polish composer, Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) made his mark within a number of musical forms, including waltzes and sonatas. Before he died from tuberculosis in Paris at age 39, he created the mazurkas and polonaises that practically define those terms. Virtuoso pianist Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) is regarded as the foremost interpreter of Chopin and one of the finest practitioners of his instrument. Rubinstein was also Polish, and lost most of his family to Hitler’s invasion of that country during WWII. He never forgave or forgot it, refusing to play in Germany for the rest of his life.
But historical facts and whirling dervishes aside, what lands this album in our ‘house favorites’ section is the sound of Rubinstein’s fingers striking the keys. It’s possible to hear the music coming right from the end of his fingertips – the piano just a conduit for the music that lived inside of him. Like Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, John Lee Hooker, Nick Drake, Billie Holiday, and a few gifted others, Rubinstein felt the music, and his touch makes it come alive in a way that ensures its immortality.
Tags: Artur Rubinstein, Classical Music, Frederic Chopin, Irving Kolodin, Mazurkas and Polonaises
6 July 2008 at 8:36 pm |
Ironic that you add this to your blog, Ive made a promise to myself to buy more classical music. A local college station plays it in the AM everyday on my way to work and Ive fallin in LOVE with the Serenity and timelessness of it
If you have any tips besides this one-send em my way