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Rating: Chopin had a mission: to preserve Beauty in the world, and to express the restless movements of his soul through the song of his piano. No one before or after him has managed to bring to life the most delicate, fiery, sometimes murky and morbid elements of their passions and melancholy.
His musical language is novel, unprecedented... it seems to have emerged out of nowhere! His stylistic perfection, together with his tormented sensitivity, make comparisons with our Leopardi meaningful; and it is no coincidence that Chopin is also (and rightly) called the Poet of the piano. Pure analogies with Baudelaire are evident in him, as (quoting Mila): “Something murky, something sick undoubtedly ferments beneath the veil of fragile candor that shrouds Chopin’s works: it is the romantic malaise of inability to live, (...) the unsatisfied yearning for chimerical dreams”. Fryderyk speaks to the heart of humanity with his music. And sometimes you grow fond of him like a brother, you want to embrace him, to make him understand that he is not alone... but do not think of sentimentality in his music; there are only raw, disarming FEELINGS.
To accomplish his mission, Chopin often wore a mask: social (Waltzes and Rondos), poetic-legendary (Ballades), technical-didactic (Etudes). The “mask” he wears while composing the Polonaises (and in the case of the Mazurkas), is that of patriotism. And it is precisely his mature polonaises that represent one of the first examples of musical nationalism. A homeland, his Poland, now distant, lost, idealized, marked by the Russian occupation of 1831 (which forced him to exile in Paris). If the ten youthful works in this form (the first of which was composed at the age of seven!) have a politely salon and entertainment tone, the six masterpieces of maturity (and a seventh polonaise-fantasy) present in this record are of a wholly different nature.
Here one mourns the end of a happy season, recalls its ancient splendor, its nobility. Here one struggles with the impotence in the face of adverse fate, and at the same time hopes for a utopia of a better and reconciled world. Poland itself becomes a metaphor and psychological pretext to give body and life to a thousand other demons: lost innocence, unrequited love, the unjust transience of life, a desolate solitude, the proud pride of an ancient elite of warriors now decimated. But at the same time an heartfelt and confident appeal to all the noblest values of the human spirit, so that, at the dawn of the day after, we might all rise from the mud and poverty to elevate ourselves to Love and Beauty.
These sublime works have received many worthy interpretations, but I feel I must recommend the '76 recording by Maurizio Pollini for Deutsche Grammophon. Shortly after his historic recordings of the Etudes and Preludes, Pollini, perhaps at the height of his powers, accomplishes a truly remarkable feat. The sixth Polonaise, very famous, and usually treated with a “sportive” and triumphant manner by less profound performers, is transfigured by Pollini into a halo of decadence and bitterness that is most pertinent, especially in the central and final parts. In the first two, of op. 26, he manages to magnificently highlight the contrast between the more lyrical moments and the more vigorous ones, and throughout the record, his boldness and audacity in playing these works is astonishing, almost defiantly. The most complex moment compositionally, and magnificently interpreted, is the final Polonaise-Fantasy op. 61, composed three years after the sixth and very different from the others. It opens fantastically like an improvisation, and the first hints of the main theme are heard. The rhythm of the Polonaise (three-quarter, with the accent on the second beat) is not yet present, except at subliminal levels, and gradually forms itself, finally beginning with a vigorous burst. Truly elaborate thematic developments occur, and in the middle, it almost seems like one can hear a Nocturne.
The conclusion unfolds in a whirl of sounds, that closes this powerful Pandora's box.
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