Janusz Olejniczak plays Chopin | Insertearlymusic.bc.ca EMV Cathedral Series 2017/18

revised programme pagetwo recitals in collaboration with the vancouver chopin society

This programme will be performed without an interval

Works by Fryderyk Chopin

(1810-1849)

Part of this programme will be performed on an original 1852 London Boudoir Grand by John Broadwood & Sons;

other works will be performed on a modern Steinway Grand. + + +

There will be short pauses to move the instruments. Please feel free to stand, but remain at your seats.

+ + +

THE FOLLOWING WORKS WILL BE INCLUDED:

Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. Posth(performed on both the Broadwood and the Steinway)

BROADWOOD :

Four Mazurkas Two Waltzes

Polonaise in A major, Op.40

STEINWAY :

Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23

Mazurka Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31

Mazurka Polonaise in A-flat major Op. 53

The unauthorised use of ANY video or audio recording device is strictly prohibited.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 | 7:30 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 | 7:30 PM

Janusz Olejniczak plays Chopin

supported by Chris Guzy & Mari Csemi

This programme will be performed without an interval

Works by Fryderyk Chopin

(1810-1849)

Part of this programme will be performed on an original 1852 London Boudoir Grand by John Broadwood & Sons;

other works will be performed on a modern Steinway Grand. + + +

There will be short pauses to move the instruments. Please feel free to stand, but remain at your seats.

+ + +

THE FOLLOWING WORKS WILL BE INCLUDED:

Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. Posth(performed on both the Broadwood and the Steinway)

BROADWOOD :

Six Mazurkas Waltz

Two Preludes Polonaise in A major, Op.40

STEINWAY :

Nocturne No. 19 in E minor, Op. 72 Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31

Mazurka Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 Polonaise in A-flat major Op. 53

The Mazurkas, Waltzes and Preludes are not specified; Janus Olejniczak will decide truly by the feel of the moment (as Chopin used to do in his performances).

EMV Cathedral Series 2017/18 staff@earlymusic.bc.ca Janusz Olejniczak plays Chopin | Insert

chopin and broadwood in 1848

by john glofcheskie

On 16 February 1848, Chopin gave what was to be his last concert in the Salle Pleyel where he had made his Paris debut sixteen years earlier. The audience of 300 heard a programme that began with a Mozart piano trio followed by a nocturne, the Barcarolle, etudes and the Berceuse in the fi rst half; the second half began with his new cello sonata and ended with preludes, mazurkas, and waltzes. The instrument was a Pleyel grand, Chopin’s favourite make since his arrival in the city in 1831 at the age of twenty-one.

Camille Pleyel was Chopin’s loyal friend and supporter as well as a provider of instruments. In the summer of 1837 the pair made a visit to London with Chopin incognito. At James Shudi Broadwood’s house, the composer was introduced as “Mr. Fritz”, but his playing after dinner gave his identity away. (The association between Broadwood in London and Pleyel in Paris was occasioned by the threat of Érard who had factories in both cities.)

Chopin had grown up with Viennese pianos in Warsaw. For his 1829 debut in Vienna, he selected an instrument by Graf. In Paris, there was a clear division between the concert instrument and the salon instrument. The word was: “Érard – Liszt, Pleyel – Chopin”.

Chopin was oft-quoted as saying: “When I feel out of sorts, I play on an Érard piano, where I easily fi nd a ready-made tone. But when I feel in good form and strong enough to fi nd my own individual sound, then I need a Pleyel piano.” Liszt himself acknowledged that Chopin cherished Pleyels for their “silvery and slightly veiled sonority and their lightness of touch.” Érard provided Liszt with the power he needed in a city of virtuosos.

Aside from the 1837 London visit, Broadwood pianos do not fi gure in Chopin’s life until 1848 when he spent seven months in England and Scotland from 20 April to 23 November. Chopin’s decision to go to London was occasioned by the Paris Uprising on 22 February, only one of the revolutions that were to engulf Europe in that year. The Polish Springtime of Nations and its aftermath were also to be a constant preoccupation. The political situation aff ected his economic situation. Giving lessons in Paris was his main source of income and this was to dry up in the climate of fear that engulfed the city.

Chopin went to London with the intention of giving concerts in public and private settings, as well as teaching. From Paris, Pleyel sent the grand piano that Chopin had used for his February concert. Érard likewise provided a grand for Chopin’s drawing room. From the Broadwood factory, Chopin selected a grand piano for his public concerts and another for his lodgings.

John Fowler Broadwood, grandson of the company founder, provided such generous and constant support to Chopin that the composer called him “a real Pleyel”. The majority of Chopin’s London concerts and one in Manchester on 29 August featured a Broadwood concert grand, now on permanent loan to the Cobbe Collection in England. Broadwood put Chopin in touch with music publishers, and even secretly provided the composer with a new spring mattress when he complained of not sleeping well.

When the London season was over and Chopin made the twelve-hour train journey to Edinburgh on 5 August, Broadwood paid for two tickets for the composer (the second being for his legs) as well as another for his new Irish manservant, Daniel, who would stay with Chopin until his death. At Calder House, near Edinburgh, Chopin’s loyal and over-helpful Scottish friend and Paris pupil, Jane Stirling, along with her married sister, Catherine Erskine, kept the composer socially occupied. Stirling made her Pleyel grand available to Chopin in her drawing room, and he found a Broadwood in his own rooms. When he returned to Edinburgh after his Manchester concert on 29 August, he stayed with the Polish-born doctor, Lyszczynski, whose wife recalled Chopin playing on an old Broadwood square piano of her childhood “with evident pleasure”. For his Glasgow concert on 4 October, Broadwood again sent a grand from London.

In the end, neither the English nor Scottish climate proved benefi cial to the composer’s health or his spirit. On 31 October Chopin returned to London and played in public only once more—in a side room at a Grand Polish Ball and Concert on 16 November. When he wrote to his close friend Grzymala to set up a Paris apartment again, he requested a Pleyel. Ultimately it was only on a Pleyel that Chopin could realize his unique pianist gift.

In 1849, John Fowler Broadwood was working on a piano to send to Chopin—the fi rst of his full iron frame grands. But its arrival was precluded by the thirty-nine-year-old composer’s death on 17 October— less than a year after his return from England.

Janusz Olejniczak plays Chopin | Insertearlymusic.bc.ca EMV Cathedral Series 2017/18

The Broadwood TraditionJohn Broadwood (1732-1812), a Scottish carpenter, moved to London in 1761 where he apprenticed with the Swiss harpsichord maker Shudi (1702-1773). In 1771, two years after marrying Shudi’s daughter, Broadwood took over his business. Broadwood’s last harpsichord dates from 1793. He began to produce square pianos in 1775 and grands in 1785. By 1808 the fi rm was known as John Broadwood and Sons. By the 1830s Broadwood had become the largest and most successful piano manufacturer in the world.

The grandson Henry Fowler Broadwood (1811-1893) became a one-fi fth partner in the fi rm in 1836. Fluent in French and German, a businessman and a sportsman, he led the Broadwood fi rm through the century, facing tough competition. He maintained the Broadwood tradition of hand craftsmanship. The loss of the Gold Medal to Érard in the Great Exhibition of 1851 saw Henry Fowler seek advice from the German/French pianist Charles Hallé who had come to England in 1848, the same year as Chopin. Hallé concluded that the Broadwood was “superior, particularly in beauty of tone”, while the Érard had “good qualities of which clarity is the primary one”, pointing as well to its “wider variety of shading.” >

The 1852 London Boudoir Grand by John Broadwood & Sons

The period instrument being used in tonight’s performance is no. 989 in a series of Boudoir Grand Pianos manufactured by Broadwood in London between 1835 and 1890. It is a rare fi nd. The piano shows remarkably little wear and is as close to its original condition as one might hope for after one hundred and sixty-six years.

This Broadwood was a family instrument, brought by its English owners to British Columbia in the 1950s, and seemingly unplayed during its history. Marinus van Prattenburg of Abbotsford restored the piano in the spring of 2017. All of the parts are original except for the strings which have been replaced by Röslau steel wire, using the original gauges.

The oak case is 7’1” in length, and 4’2” in width. The veneer is of Bookmatch Brazilian Rosewood. The bottom of case is open, but covered with loose-woven burlap. As is characteristic of this model of Broadwood, the lid has only a short stick. An iron composite frame with two tension bars stabilizes the case.

The keyboard has a range of six and three-quarter octaves, from CC to a4. The 82 keys are made of ebony and ivory. The soundboard grain runs across the strings (parallel to keyboard). The instrument is straight strung, with single stringing in the bass from CC to FF, double stringing in the next octave up to F, and triple stringing for the remainder of the instrument up to a4. The original tuning pins are oblong (not square as on the modern piano), and required the making of a special-fi tting tuning hammer of the period. The tuning sits at A 430 Hz, slightly under modern pitch.

The Broadwood action is simple (without Érard’s double escapement), but still allows for unusually good key repetition. The original hammers, felts, and dampers were restored to playing condition and did not need to be replaced. There are two wooden pedals, damper and una corda. (In contrast to Viennese and other makes, these two pedals were standard on English grands throughout their history.) The fact that the wood on the sustaining pedal is hardly worn is a good indication that the 1852 instrument was hardly played.

Because the hammer strikes a partial, and the damper is on a node, in pianos up until the later nineteenth century, there is always a shimmer of overtone (in contrast to the dry cut-out of sound on modern instruments where larger dampers cover both the partial and the node). The soundboard is fl at, not crowned as on modern piano.

The result of the restoration is an instrument with a true Broadwood harmonic sound spectrum. Later Broadwood

pianos, such as Early Music Vancouver’s recently-restored 1870 Broadwood Drawing Room Grand, are more powerful, with bigger hammers and dampers, higher string tension, heavier string gauges, and heavier frames.

+ + +

NOTE: The above description is based on information provided by Marinus van Prattenburg who regards Broadwood piano makers as not just craftsmen but as artists (using comparatively primitive tools). In a career spanning more than fi fty years, Marinus has restored numerous Broadwoods, both squares and grands, the earliest a 1784 square piano. Square pianos, both British and American, have been a special passion of his. Aside from Broadwoods, he has restored several Érard grands, and occasionally Pleyel and Gaveau instruments.

When asked to choose among period pianos he has restored, Marinus says he treasures Érard for its clarity and sweetness of sound. (“I never came across a bad-sounding Érard.”) For construction technology, he cites Broadwood. (“Their joinery of wood framing, etc., is unbelievably fi ne. This is why so many survived so well.”) For the modern piano his choices are Steinway and Bechstein.

When asked for a comparison of the treble on instruments associated with Chopin, Marinus commented on the Pleyel with its beautiful clarity in the upper strings, “sweet, like silver bells”. For him, Érard has similar clarity. The Broadwood treble is “less sustaining, drier, but still pretty”.

The 1852 Broadwood was his fi nal restoration. Now that he has retired, his fi nal project is for himself—a new Viennese fortepiano, ca. 1800, of his own design, which he plans to fi nish by late spring of 2018.

Marinus is also a published author whose books include Mr. Sebastian: the life story of a mid-nineteenth century grand piano.

EMV Cathedral Series 2017/18 staff@earlymusic.bc.ca Janusz Olejniczak plays Chopin | Insert

Marinus van Prattenburg, restorer of early pianosMarinus van Prattenburg, who restored the 1852 Broadwood instrument that will be used in the first half of each of these two recitals, had his early training in The Netherlands. He settled on the west coast in the late 1970s – just around the time that I became the manager with what was then known as the Vancouver Society for Early Music.

Marinus’ presence here, and his enthusiastic generosity in making instruments from his workshop available for our performances, has made for many rewarding concerts over the years, putting EMV in the forefront of the exploration of classical and romantic repertoires at a time when presenters of ‘early music’ worldwide were still largely focusing on mediæval, renaissance, and baroque repertoires.

One of our first major projects around 19th-century pianos involved a series of three concerts, as part of the Vancouver Centennial celebrations in 1986. Max van Egmond performed a late 19th-century recital of German Lieder and French Chansons, accompanied by Colin Tilney on a splendid Érard grand. Tenor Bruce Pullan offered a programme of Victorian song accompanied by Arlie Thompson on a Broadwood square piano. Anner Bylsma, together with violinist Vera Beths and an ensemble of Vancouver musician, led the first period-instrument performance in North America of Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals (1886); the pianists were Stanley Hoogland from The Hague (on a magnificent Chickering grand), and Robert Rogers of Vancouver.

Many other original instruments from Marinus’ workshop have been featured in ground-breaking EMV concerts – by performers such as Malcolm Bilson (Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin with baritone Max van Egmond), Melvyn Tan (on a Viennese fortepiano of the 1830s), Steven Lubin (on a Viennese fortepiano of ca. 1810), Lambert Orkis, Bruce Vogt (Liszt on an 1864 Érard) and others.

Now that Marinus has decided that it’s time for a well-deserved retirement, we at Early Music Vancouver want to express for our appreciation for his wonderful contributions over more than 25 years, and we wish him a happy retirement (knowing that he won’t be able to resist to keep working on early pianos, the love of his life).

José Verstappen, Artistic Director Emeritus

Broadwood survived the factory fire of 1856 and continued to experiment with technical advances on a wide variety of piano types. In the International Exhibition of 1862, Broadwood regained the Gold Medal. Upon his death, Henry Fowler was praised as “one of the most conscientious and profoundly scientific of pianoforte makers.”

Broadwood’s Tuner on Chopin in 1848

Alfred James Hipkins (1826-1903) joined Broadwood in 1840 as a technical adviser. A pianist as well as a tuner, Hipkins describes meeting Chopin in 1848: “He was ill, but only showed it painfully in his weakened breathing power; he could not walk upstairs. He was painstaking in the choice of the pianos he was to play upon anywhere, as he was in his dress, his gloves, his French; you cannot imagine a more perfect technique than he possessed! But he abhorred banging a piano; his forte was relative, not absolute; it was based upon his exquisite pianos and pianissimos—always a waving line, crescendo and diminuendo.”

In tuning Chopin’s grand pianos for concerts and in his lodgings, Hipkins observed his technique: “The wide extending arpeggios in the bass were transfused by touch and pedal into their corresponding sustained chords. He kept his elbows close to his sides, and played only with finger-touch, no weight from the arms. He used a simple, natural position of the hands as conditioned by scale- and chord-playing, adopting the easiest fingering that came to him, although it might be against the rules. He changed fingers upon a key as often as an organ-player.”

Hipkins further reports that Chopin “especially liked Broadwood’s Boudoir Cottage pianos of that date, two-stringed but very sweet instruments, and found pleasure in playing on them”. The small six-octave upright piano with the Boudoir name was first made by Broadwood in 1840. (Chopin had a similar pianino by Pleyel as a second instrument for his teaching in Paris. The keyboard was said to speak easily and to repeat well.)

Highly responsive to Chopin’s individual approach to the piano, Hipkins would give the first Chopin recitals in England. Later he became a leading historian of keyboard instruments and writer on music.

Chopin’s pianos and ours

In 1931, the Swiss-American pianist, Ernest Schelling, trained in Paris and later sole student of Paderewski, wrote: “Our modern pianos, with their vast sonority, are equally different in their touch from the pianos of Chopin’s time. The large, heavy hammers, the depth of touch, almost double that of the pianos of 1845, demand today a totally different strength, suppleness and training.” Each period piano is its own teacher; the player need only listen.

Janusz Olejniczak and the period piano

In 1991, the Polish émigré director, Andrzej Zulawski released La note bleue, a French film about the end of the relationship between George Sand and Chopin in 1847. Janusz Olejniczak played the role of the composer both musically and dramatically. Since Zulawski insisted on absolute authenticity, Olejniczak faced the issue of period pianos for the first time in his life. Although the film did not have wide distribution, a CD soundtrack recording on an 1831 Pleyel grand proved a watershed in the history of Chopin historical performance.

In an interview for Diapason Harmonie (May 1991), Olejniczak described the experience:

“In 130 minutes of film, there are 110 minutes of music. Of course, some of the music is used as background, but there are also a lot of pieces that I play live, on three different pianos, including an upright piano and especially the old Pleyel with its mechanical issues. I’d never played an instrument from that time. A lot of things about the fingering and technique suddenly made sense. There are chords that you have to produce as an arpeggio on a modern keyboard which are right under your fingers, with the Pleyel’s slightly narrower keys. The legato is also more natural.”

The Polish pianist went on to make a number of CD recordings on Érard and Pleyel pianos, as well as modern instruments. Tonight he explores the sound world of the mid-nineteenth century Broadwood in relation to that of the modern Steinway.