Radio: Every Work That Chopin Wrote

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30981, 10 February 1966, Page 6

Radio: Every Work That Chopin Wrote

When the N.Z.B.C. decided to broadcast the complete music of Chopin, to some the greatest of all composers for the piano, the task of producing the programmes was given to Bessie Pollard of Christ-

church. It was more than an ordinary assignment for the series was to run to 37 programmes that would take the YC stations at least half of 1966 to work through, and although Chopin was not a prolific composer—his works take about 50 hours to play—there was a tremendous amount of research done to make certain that no work was overlooked, and that no detail given introducing a piece was incorrect. For seven months Miss Pollard was involved in preparations. Her desk in the Christchurch programme centre gradually disappeared under piles of LPs, biographies, scores and scripts, not to forget the routine memoranda and programme logs of daily programme work, and the stack of tapes in red boxes eventually rose so high that only the chatter of her typewriter or wisps of smoke from a cigarette gave away her presence. But now her desk can be seen again, the tapes have gone, and the Chopin discs have been replaced by Schnabel’s Beethoven; the Chopin series is complete and the first programme will be broadcast on Monday evening. INTRODUCTION The series will be launched by a talk by Ernest Empson of Christchurch. There are four sections to the series itself and each will be introduced by another speaker. Maurice Till will introduce the chamber music, Colin Horsley the orchestral music, Molly Atkinson of Palmerston North the vocal music, and Miss Pollard the solo and duo piano music. The series was one of the biggest Miss Pollard has produced, coming second to the complete Bach cantatas of a few years ago. “I enjoy these big projects,” she admitted. “There’s so much delving into books and music required. You can really get involved in your subject, and when it’s completed you feel you’re an authority on it. “When you play a composer as a student, you think you get to know him,” Miss

Pollard said. “But, looking at Chopin from the outside, directing this series, was an eye-opener. INNOVATOR “The scope of his work is so great. You find that what you had studied were only a few works—and it makes you wonder about the other composers you thought you knew. “The other surprise was to find how far ahead of their time his works were. A lot of musicians say Chopin was a drawing room composer. But his music was in fact experimental. He was just as much an innovator in the nineteenth century as Bartok was in this century.” Chopin’s innovations were in both playing and composition. Miss Pollard cited his bold chromaticism, his intricate rhythms, his fingering and pedalling, and the third piano sonata, which was more a new structure than an attempt to build one on old foundations. “He was so original. He didn’t copy others. He had no need to; he was Chopin.” His biographers say Chopin was a foppish man, a social butterfly, a snob and a weakling. But as far as the piano was concerned he was a genius. He grew up a child prodigy in Warsaw, the toast of the Polish nobility, and when at 20 he set out to conquer the musical world he had evolved the most beautiful and original piano style of the century. In the age of Liszt the thunderer he established himself in Paris as a pianist of extraordinary finesse and as a composer with revolutionary concepts. He gave few concerts, played mostly at soirees, and became a busy society teacher until his death from tuberculosis at 39 in 1849.

Although Chopin was a conservative and hated the romantics he was the first modern pianist and the one who set romantic pianism on its course. Of all the romantics’ works, Chopin’s have remained the most popular. INTERPRETATIONS In selecting the music for the series Miss Pollard has tried to give a wide representation of the interpretations available in the N.Z.B.C. library. The artists include Askenase, Ashkenazy, Boukoff, Brailowsky, Czlffra, Malcuzyn-

ski, Moiseiwiitsch, Rubinstein . . . “There are a good number of Poles because I think they have the authentic background,” she said. One she would have included was Vladimar de Pachman, a famous Chopin interpreter nicknamed “Chopinzee” for his antics, but suitable recordings were not available. SPECIAL PERFORMANCES In some cases New Zealand artists recorded works specially for the series. These include Maurice Till, who recorded a concerto with Juan Matteucci conducting the N.Z.B.C. Symphony, Diana Stephenson and Madeleine Benet of Auckland, and the New Zealand Piano Duo of Judith McDonald and Shirley Power. Miss Pollard watched the new recordings “because you never know when something is going to turn up.” Sure enough, about halfway through the series, a disc arrived from Warsaw containing a work found only two years ago, a set of variations for flute and piano on the soprano aria, “Non piu mesto” from “La Cenerentolla.” Asked about musical discoveries she had particularly enjoyed making—a hard question for a woman who had so obviously enjoyed every work —Miss Pollard named the sonata in G major for piano and cello, “it’s a lovely work, and it’s a wonder we don’t hear it more often;” the songs “they were sort of written down and neglected, which is a great pity because there are some beautiful ones;” and the mazurkas, “I enjoyed hearing them all because we tend to hear only certain ones.”