Luck helped me, giving me the chance to talk with Chopin on a chill Paris evening. The setting is the usual one: fireplace, comfy easy chair, a good cigar and perhaps a glass of fine wine. I manage to approach the great composer in one of those moments when he is alone and pensive.
AB: Pardon me if I’m disturbing you, but I’d like to exchange some ideas with you, if I may.
CH: Of course! Make yourself at home, but don’t speak to me of Prussians or emotional ties.
AB: Well! I think it’s rather difficult to leave that topic aside. Anyway, tell me briefly about your companion, Sand.
CH: First of all, I wouldn’t use the term “companion.” She was an advisor, who took care of my career and my musical interests.
AB: About your music, you wrote so many compositions for piano solo. Why is that?
CH: Mainly because I found the instrument ideally suited to my style and my thought. In addition, it has great volume, which makes me think of an orchestra. And let’s not forget that I wrote two concertos for piano and orchestra. So you see, I didn’t stop with just the piano alone.
AB: But do you think only about music?
CH: No! Even though history books have always described me as introverted, only loving solitude and music. Personally I don’t subscribe to that, because I love to live outside of tradition. But it was all interpreted as the desire to be alone. Poor devils!
AB: How is it that you always preferred to play in salons, refusing to perform in theaters?
CH: It was just a matter of taste. I always liked to play for just a few people, since only then is it possible to feel contact with the audience, so you enrich yourself not just musically but humanly. And let’s not forget that in those days the theater scene was just beginning, because music was still for the few. Liszt started the theatrical experience, but his was a totally different mind from mine. He was fonder of a large audience, when the show was the most interesting aspect, not the message that each individual musician could give.
AB: In any case, beyond these various opinions and controversies, do you think that you were fully recognized as a composer?
CH: Not totally! Everyone cites me as a pianist, as a sensitive performer, or they remember me only as the great composer for piano solo. Yes, I dealt mainly with that instrument, but I also wrote the Sonata op. 65 for cello and piano, and 17 Polish songs for voice and piano. It’s not a lot, I know, but it was an effort to go beyond the influence of the piano, which was still a novelty and hence worthy of attention! In short, I wish other people would remember me not just as a musician but as a man.
AB: I see your admirers are starting to give me dirty looks because I’m keeping you away from them, so I’ll ask one final question. How do you view the future of the piano?
CH: Fine, with regard to technique and the rise of virtuosi, totally negative in terms of interpretation. Already we are seeing the symptoms of a cooling off in the minds of young people, imagine the future. Time continues its inexorable march and logically speaking something will change.
AB: Thank you, maestro! I’ll keep you informed about when the interview will appear..
CH: Of course! But keep in mind that it’s very difficult to find me, I’m leaving on a very long tour.
(trad. Interpres sas Giussano)
