Mazurka Op. 17/4

The Chopin Bicentennial may have come and gone, but for pianists the celebration continues. It would be difficult to imagine a modern piano recital had Chopin not lived, so critical are his own works and his influence on composers from Schumann and Liszt to Scriabin and Prokofiev. Because he focused to an unprecedented extent on one particular instrument, he succeeded in extracting a dramatic voice that few contemporaries imagined existed within the piano's wooden shell. Tonight's program showcases Chopin's career across four genres that he essentially invented: Mazurka, Nocturne, Impromptu, and Ballade.

When Chopin left his native Warsaw at age 19, eventually settling in Paris, he had mastered all the provincial capital had to offer. Still, emotional ties to Poland remained strong while abroad. His glorification of the nationalist Mazurka, in particular, reveals a homesickness that could barely be restrained. The Polish refer to such longing as Źal, an all-encompassing nostalgia that pervades nearly every piece Chopin composed. Previously the Mazurka had been a brusque mixture of three peasant dances: the Mazur, Kujawiak, and Oborek. However, Chopin's fifty-one Mazurkas are not dance music per se. Rather they are stylized recreations of a folk spirit that seemed worlds away from the Parisian salons. Works like the justly famous A-minor Mazurka, Op. 17 No. 4 (1833), feature Chopin's famous written-in rubato, where ornamented figures borrowed from bel canto opera float weightlessly above a predictable left-hand rhythm. Equally important is his use of chromatically shifting harmonies to induce a subtly fluid expressive state, wavering each moment between youthful dash and gloom.

(c) Jason Stell