Happy Birthday Chopin!

This year is the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth. He was born on 1st March 1810. In celebration of this I'm giving a concert of Chopin's piano music at Stuart House on Sunday 21st November. Further details are available on my website. Chopin is an interesting composer. Almost all of his music was for solo piano and covers such a huge range of styles. The Sonatas are examples of major works and I'm hoping to include the Sonata in B minor on 21st. However, we also get the Nocturnes demonstrating his ability at writing wonderful melodies and the Mazurkas and Polonaises show his love of Poland. It has been said that there were three main influences of Chopin's piano music. Firstly his musical education which probably included studies of works by J S Bach, Haydn, Mozart and others. Secondly his love of Italian opera which we see in many of his beautiful melodies and thirdly we see his love of Poland. It is sad that Chopin only lived for 39 years - who knows what else he might have written.

I'd encourage you to explore some of Chopin's piano music if you haven't already done so. Have a listen to some recordings and if you play piano why not look at some of his music. Some of the easier Preludes are probably a good place to start as a few of them are around ABRSM grade 6 standard.

Tips for Pianists no. 9: Research the music

I was reminded again this last week of the importance of researching music. I was performing Mozart's Sonata in A minor K310 and was doing some research for the programme notes. Mozart only wrote two piano Sonatas in a minor key and both have quite a dark atmosphere. The Sonata in A minor was written shortly after his mother's death and certainly portrays much of the emotion he must have been feeling at the time. Obviously this is going to have a big impact on how one performs the piece.

Always take some time to research the music you are playing. What do you know about the composer? What was happening in the composer's life when he wrote that piece? What do you know about that particular piece? How does it compare or differ from the composer's other work? Looking for information on these particular questions will certainly help to understand how to interpret the music. There are plenty of sources of information too. Look in music libraries, internet, CD inlays and notes actually in the printed music.