‘CHOPIN WAS UNDER-ESTIMATED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 76, 6 December 1940, Page 18

‘CHOPIN WAS UNDER-ESTIMATED

Friedman Talks Of His Great Countryman DENIAL that Chopin was a | A "drawing room composer" | was given by Ignaz Friedman in a recent broadcast talk on his countryman. He spoke on the predominance of German musical criticism, and said that Chopin, like England’s Purcell, had been underestimated. This is the text of M. Friedman’s comments: " About thirty years ago I edited all the works of Chopin. In the foreword I pointed out that for a long time the German musical critic was regarded as the decisive one. Because of this plenty of mistakes were caused in valuing anything which wasn’t German music. For instance, very few people outside England have heard about the English composer, Purcell, who, in my opinior, is as great as Bach or Beethoven. The German critic is responsible for this deplorable fact. Owing to the same German critic, a great number of people conceived the wrong idea that Chopin is a ‘drawing room composer.’ But Chopin was a prophet who anticipated things for the future, and this was only realised about half a century after his death. In other words, we find in Chopin germs of Wagner, the later Russian school, and Debussy. Chopin has in his palette as many dramatic, epic elements as sentimental and romantic ones, and is an unsurpassable example of what Petronius used to call ‘ Arbiter elegantiarum.’ "The opinion of the contemporary musical critics on the so-called ‘ matter-of-fact’ music or rational or constructive music, is in- my opinion wrong, false. The fact that Chopin remained unique in his music, that nothing of his musical soul perished after a period of 100 years, and his compositions are gaining under-

standing and admiration now, all proves that Chopin is more vital than scores of musical messiahs who came and have gone. "From the purely pianistic point of view, Chopin revolutionised the entire technique; he discovered and exhausted the modern piano. So Liszt, for example, considered the greatest pianist of his time and composer as well, re-created only a great number of external sounds for piano transcriptions, arranging orchestral works-or vocal compositions, in piano transcriptions. Full of admiration for the violin technique of Paganini, Liszt re-arranged his compositions for piano. "Chopin, on the other hand, extracts from the piano itself all sounds, aromas and colours, in a masterful, unsurpassable manner. "The technique of the modern French composers, such as Debussy or Ravel, is a sort of alloy of the art of old clavecinists and Chopin. The same may be said of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff in Russia, and Szymanowski in Poland. Chopin is essentially Polish in his art of composition, not only because he wrote mazurkas and polonaises, but also because his Polish spirit dominates his ballades and preludes."