Chopin: Polonaise No. 3 in A major, Op. 40 No. 1 'Military'

Emil Gilels played a sonata by Scarlatti at his first public concert in 1929 and included them in his tours to the West in the 1950s. These recordings present a splendid group of the composer’s widely contrasting moods. Gilels was a true virtuoso in the Lisztian tradition, combining musical integrity with rarely equalled technique. The Fantasia was one of the works with which he won the First Soviet All-Union Competition in 1933, while his recordings of the Hungarian Rhapsodies and three works by Chopin are full of character and personality. A recently discovered notebook in which Gilels logged some of his recording sessions has made the dating of these recordings more accurate in this edition.

Ward Marston, audio restoration engineer

Polonaise: almost always, as soon as the word is uttered, it conjures up the name of Frédéric Chopin. And what could be more natural with a creative genius who was constantly attracted to the genre? His first work, published in Warsaw, was entitled ‘Polonaise for pianoforte dedicated to her Excellency the Countess Victoire Skarbek by Friderik Chopin, aged eight years’; and right up to the concluding Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op.61, fourteen other similar compositions had punctuated the all-too-brief career of the Polish maestro. Before Chopin, a number of musicians had devoted themselves to the polonaise since its appearance in the sixteenth century under the name of ‘Polish Dance’, before assuming that simply of ‘Polonaise’ (‘Polish’) in the following century. Gradually this dance in triple time had extended its influence to the whole of Europe. Undoubtedly some admirable polonaises had been written, but at the expense of the original essence of a proud, manly and noble dance. To Frédéric Chopin fell the honour of reviving that initial virility – of recreating the polonaise.

Franz Liszt had not been mistaken when, shortly after the premature death of his friend, he wrote: ‘His Polonaises... are among his most inspired creations; in no way do they remind us of those over-ornate, pretty-pretty pieces à la Pompadour... Their vigorous rhythm sets us quivering; it rouses us from our usual torpid indifference. The noblest sentiments of the Poland of old come to life in them. A sense of firm determination allied to gravity is what strikes us from the start. For the most part soldierly in spirit, they express gallantry and valour on a note of simplicity which typifies these qualities in a warrior nation. They exude a calm and thoughtful strength, and we feel we are back with those Poles of earlier days depicted in their chronicles.’

There could be no better commentary to introduce the Polonaise in A flat Op.53 (1843), one of Chopin’s most celebrated achievements whose usual nickname, the ‘Heroic’, sums up manly determination and fervour and a distinctly narrative character which has led some to detect in it an underlying programme. The ‘Military’ Polonaise in A major, Op.40 No.1 (1838), again paints a portrait of a valiant and combative people, an image which owes much to a rising melodic pattern and a verticality of composition issuing from vast and powerful chords. In complete contrast, the Polonaise in C minor, Op.40 No.2 (1839), is notable for its mood of distress. Is this not the bitterness and despondency of defeat at the close of day, seemingly born of the bass notes underlying the sombre chords from the right hand?

Four years before these two works of perfection Chopin had completed the two Polonaises Op.26. Created by a composer only twenty-five years old, they underline just how early in his career he had acquired a quite inimitable idiom. What vigour, indeed, in the first of these, in C sharp minor, which, if it does not make a clean break with the somewhat ornate manner of the polonaises of his even earlier youth (cf. Opus 71), already demonstrates an impressive authority. As for the second, the drama prefigured in the pianissimo of its opening bars is subsequently developed with an imagination expressed in sound which is astonishingly modern. The Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op.44 (1841) remains undoubtedly one of Chopin’s most enigmatic and disconcerting pieces. Its originality lies in its association of the polonaise with Chopin’s other favourite dance, the mazurka, and this association generates a strange atmosphere which Liszt, again, has wonderfully defined: ‘It is like the recounting of a dream in the first glimmering of a grey and misty winter dawn, a dream that follows a long, sleepless night, a dream-poem intermingling impression and reality which have no connection with one another, but which curiously coalesce.’

Published posthumously by Julien Fontana in 1871, the three Polonaises Op.71 – in D minor, B flat and F minor respectively – were written before their composer had finally left Poland. They are therefore the work of an adolescent who dazzled the aristocrats of Warsaw with his extraordinary talents. If here we are still far removed from the dramatic impact of the works which were to follow, we cannot fail to respond to the freshness and pianistic inventiveness of three compositions of great promise, made evident in a distinctive sense for contrast (No.1) or full-flavoured popular appeal (No.2).

As the orchestra plays an extremely limited and secondary role the Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante in E flat can be performed without detriment on the solo piano. This work, so rich in lyricism and sparkle, was written between 1830 and 1834 and crowns that period of stylistic brilliance begun before his departure from Poland. Imbued with all the insouciance of a young composer intent on winning over his public, this work derives its impact from the contrast between the peaceful atmosphere and half-toned cantabile of the Andante, and the triumphant high spirits of the polonaise which follows.

With the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat, Op.61 (1846), Chopin made his last incursion into the world of the polonaise. The listener must not be put off by the evident multiformity of a masterpiece which is remarkable for the variety and complexity of the feelings and moods it expresses. The Polonaise-Fantaisie belongs among those works one gradually gets to grips with, constantly improving one’s appreciation of the inexhaustible wealth of poetry and the compositional audacities which, as with the fourth Ballade, place it among its author’s most visionary achievements.

Chopin spent the winter of 1838/39 with George Sand and her children in Majorca, where they stayed in an abandoned Carthusian monastery at Valldemosa. George Sand wrote a famous and popular story about the holiday. On this CD Sand's words, taken from her memoirs, are spoken by Hannelore Elsner.

The French pianist Samson François (1924–1970) recorded three complete Chopin sequences: the ballades, which brought him his first great success on record, the nocturnes and the polonaises. François learned his Chopin from Alfred Cortot, from whom he inherited a visionary style which suits the polonaises particularly well. (By an irony, Cortot himself played these works relatively rarely and recorded almost none of them.)

It was Chopin that François chose for his first recordings, which he made at the end of the 1940s on the Brunswick label. He recorded the polonaises twice: first in mono in 1958; then the present stereo version, made in the Salle Wagam in 1968 and 1969. There is no fundamental change of conception. If the mono recording benefits from the natural acoustic of the Salle de la Mutualité and at times offers something more rapt, it also affords less bel canto in the right hand too: the effect is more battling than dancing,so to speak.

Above all, these polonaises achieve a dramatic tension that sets them apart from other contemporary versions on disc: neither Rubinstein, supremely elegant as always, nor Stefan Askenaze, who cherishes the dance element, approach these works with such intensity.

The couplings are a handful of late works recorded at the end of sessions devoted to the nocturnes: the Trois Nouvelles Etudes, the Tarentelle, the Fantaisie in F minor and the F sharp Barcarolle share the same overcast outlook, and to that extent are a perfect foil to the often exuberant polonaises.

François played all the Chopin that was published in his day: even the C major Rondo for two pianos of 1828, reworked for four hands from an earlier solo piece, and recorded here with the pianist’s lifelong friend Pierre Barbizet.

All tracks are newly transferred and remastered to ART standard at Abbey Road Studios.

Award: Diapason d’Or

Caroline Sageman was, and to this day remains the youngest laureate in the whole history of the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. She was only seventeen. Here, she gives us a disc devoted to Chopin’s Polonaises — a very little frequented repertoire.

“This recital, given at the Studio Ansermet in Geneva, brings together the three composers who are, to my mind, most representative of the Romantic image of piano music and the most innovative. Members of the same generation 1810, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt succeeded in transcending the art of the piano by their inspired and eminently subjective musical visions.

One thing is certain: this highly moving Romantic generation represented by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt held the secret of making us dream with our heart.”

Romain Hervé

Chopin‘s oeuvre is extraordinarily manifold. It contains the whole spectrum of feelings that can stir the human soul: from the most subtle and profoundly personal emotions in the nocturnes and mazurkas to those grandiose feelings reflecting the epic of a whole nation in the polonaises and sonatas. Listening to his music is for us like experiencing a miracle. For a born Chopin interpreter is not someone who plays a lot of Chopin, but someone who finds that special “Chopin quality” in his own soul which enables him to discover in his interpretation of Chopin what no-one has discovered before him, but what is in harmony with Chopin’s world, Chopin’s poetry. Pianist Boris Bloch has a very familiar relationship to Chopin: “Today Chopin represents for me that ivory tower where I seek refuge in these troubled times in which we live.”