With Frans Bruggen and members of the Orchestra of the 18th Century — and that 1840s Pleyel piano!

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Concertgoers’ reports

Three people who were present at one or both events (rehearsal and concert) wrote in with their impressions, and I am grateful to them for allowing me to reproduce these here.

From Hiroki Sone, Stanford CA, August 30, 2009

I and my wife went to see Aimi's recent performance in Warsaw and I am writing to inform you of some corrections to the "An observer's report" portion that was recently posted. The third encore was Nocturne No. 20 instead of Impromptu No. 1.

Also this may not be so important, but I think she played 3 concertos instead of 4 in two days. She only played Mozart's concerto in the rehearsal (unless Chopin's #2 was secretly played later). The program showed both concertos scheduled for the rehearsal, but the orchestra and the audience packed and left after playing Mozart's concerto.

Anyhow, I would like to thank you for the nice part of the website you've created dedicated to Aimi. It was on this webpage, where we found out about her appearance in the music festival and we decided to take a vacation to Poland to see her live.

No question that we were stunned by Aimi's mature performance, but I really wished that she had played on a modern instrument. To me it sounded like the piano became out of tune by the time she played the 2nd encore. Also the old piano clearly lacked in volume, especially in the low keys. This was ok for most part of Mozart's concerto, but was seriously noticeable in the encores. Perhaps there was a special meaning in the music festival to use the period piano. Nonetheless, the concert was a great success and I was really impressed by her engagement with the music.

Hiroki was absolutely right about the Nocturne no. 20 encore and the correction has been made. For the postponed rehearsal of the Chopin concerto, see Tom Wierzbicki's contribution further down.

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From Michael Moran, Warsaw, September 3, 2009

I have listened to Aimi on Youtube too but this is not at all the same as listening live — there are electromagnetic vibrations from pianists performing live which affect you. Rubinstein believed this too. She was marvellous on the early instrument I thought. I have definite views on the distortion of Chopin performance since his death and have expanded the Chopin chapter of the Polish translation of my Polish book to deal with this. It comes out next year — 2010 — the bicentenary year. Far too complex a subject to go into in an email, but I can send you part of the chapter if you are interested in this aspect of performance.

I am always amazed by child prodigies, in fact anyone who can do something that requires enormous skill fabulously well long before their time.

Clearly she is fantastically gifted and very musical — we shall have to see how this talent matures and how she matures in the commercial environment into which she will undoubtedly be thrust. I do think we put performing artists on a too high pedestal when really as people they are quite normal with personal weaknesses like all of us. It is the incredible gift of nature or God that is abnormal and rare.

I had never heard of her before the festival. Many Japanese girls played brilliantly but identically and soullessly in the 2005 Chopin Competition, but she is much more musical.

The three encores as I remember them were:

1. Chopin, Scherzo No. 1 Op. 20

2. Chopin, Etude Op. 10 No. 4

3. Chopin, Lento con gran espressione (incorrectly as the Nocturne in C-minor)

She had an excellent orchestra and conductor. I think the choice of the D-minor Mozart Concerto was unfortunate. It is a profound and disturbing work of Mozart’s in the Don Giovanni mould and although she gave a fine performance digitally and expressively, I felt it lacked real emotional depth — quite understandably in one so young.

Michael Moran is an Australian writer on music and travel who lives in Warsaw. He is the author of A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland, which has received excellent reviews. At one time he studied piano and harpsichord with a view to pursuing a career in music. Anyway, I saw on his blog that he had been to Aimi's concert on 24th August and invited him to send his impressions, which are reproduce above. Check out his website (michael-moran.net) — he's had a fascinating and varied career — and there's a link there to his blog.

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From Tom Wierzbicki

Tom, an expatriate Pole living In Boston, USA, is an increasingly important contributor to my Aimi pages and I'm delighted to have these impressions of the rehearsal and concert from him. As his comments came in three private emails I have omitted parts that aren't immediately relevant. Also, as I have noted elsewhere, there is no consensus on the make of the period piano Aimi was playing on, so I have left Tom's references to it as a Pleyel.

After the rehearsal (23 August )

This is our third day in Warsaw and few hours after the rehearsal with audience. Aimi and Yuko have been extremely busy. Practice from 10am to 2pm. Then a short nap for the Japanese jet lag and rehearsal with orchestra from 5 to 7pm. We had only a glimpse of our brave travellers yesterday night and perhaps 5 minutes interaction after the rehearsal today. Aimi and her entourage were in a hurry attending night concerts by Martha Argerich in the Warsaw Filharmonic Hall today and yesterday.

We were prepared for the historical instrument, but after the first few notes this was a shock. Only the central registers were acceptable, sounding like an upright piano in a gym. The high registers were like putting a newspaper on the strings. Low was an empty cardboard. Aimi made the best of the situation even though the action must have been terrible. In the second movement [of the Mozart concerto] there are two slow parts and a fast in-between. She went like a thunder storm for it and left the unexpecting conductor and orchestra far behind.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing was the setting. The program said that the venue was the "Stage of the Great Theater". Literally the whole audience was on a huge stage separated from the main Moniuszko Hall by a fireproof cutrain. There were provisional stages on three sides of the orchestra like a basketball court or a circus. The ceiling was very very tall, so the sound was going up and disappearing.

The rehearsal of the Mozart took longer than expected and the Chopin was canceled altogether and postponed until tomorrow morning. The main event will be at 7:30pm and we will be there. Aimi has mastered the Mozart concerto — it would have been a treasure in normal circumstances.

Do not worry. Aimi is calm, and peace of mind easily overcomes all obstacles.

After the main concert (24 August)

August 24 will remain the day of Aimi's great success. After few minutes we all forgot about the 1840 Pleyel, which under her commanding hands started to sound like a Steinway.

We heard Mozart played like nothing else before, especially the cadenza and the slow movement. The Chopin concerto was good but nothing extraordinary — generally tempos too fast, but the romanza was beautiful.

Aimi gave an entire recital after the official program with [as encores] Scherzo No. 1 and a bombshell Etude No. 4 played clear, light and ultra fast.

. . . and in a follow-up email

As for the concert, I must say that Aimi was fully in it emotionally. This ensured a great performance. But it's difficult to compare her with some famous recordings that I know, mainly because of the terrible quality of the piano. And yet she drew the audience into the music and forced us to forget about the poor instrument.

I was amazed by the way Aimi could handle this instrument with its different action and distances. To make things more difficult, Aimi was only able to practise on regular pianos but performed on the 1840 Pleyel. What an accomplishment.

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More on the choice of piano, by Michael Moran, October 5, 2009

There is some misunderstanding as to the wonderful qualities of nineteenth century contemporary instruments for the performance of Chopin. The latest performance thinking and practice at the academic cutting edge of Chopin scholarship in Warsaw is examining period instrument performance more and more closely these days. I agree that the cavernous Wielki opera stage is completely unsuitable for this type of instrument — which clearly left some of the audience unimpressed with the sound, and with good reason. However, in the correct ‘salon environment’ (or small chamber concert room), Chopin on a good, properly restored Pleyel — it was a Pleyel Aimi played incidentally — is sublime. The Chopin Institute are at present releasing a large number of finely recorded CDs of Chopin’s music played by excellent players on period instruments to enormous acclaim (listed on this page). One by the Argentinean and protégé of Martha Argerich, Nelson Goerner, has already won the prestigious French Diapason d’Or. The Chopin Institute only have one excellent grand Pleyel concert instrument and an Erard. I have one of the rare Pleyel pianinos (No. 11151), restored by the famous builder and restorer in the UK, David Winston, who restored Beethoven’s piano, now in the Budapest National Museum, and the Pleyel Chopin used on his final British tour, now in the magnificent Alec Cobbe Collection of early keyboard instruments at the National Trust property Hatchlands in Surrey.

Michael suggested that I include an extract from his book to give the background to why Aimi might have been asked to play on a period instrument. This is so informative (though not of course on why such a large concert hall should have been chosen as the venue) that I have indeed included it. He asks me to point out that “my book is a travel book about the glorious landscapes, houses, castles and modern life of Poland directed towards the ‘thinking reader’ (not a musicological paper) and contains an embedded love story — there is only one chapter on the composer!”

Extract from Chapter 12, ‘Frycek and the Prism of Reminiscence’, of A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland by Michael Moran (London: Granta, 2009)

The Chopin concertos in particular are structured more around the elegant eighteenth century notion of a dialogue between the piano and the orchestra rather than the later ‘symphonic concerto’. This has resulted in many misunderstandings concerning his ‘inadequate’ orchestration. The use of a Pleyel readily restores the proper dynamic and musical balance between the soloist and orchestra. Clearly a young player cannot build a concert and competition career on the earlier instrument, but a consideration of the piano Chopin chose to teach and perform on is a useful and educational corrective, confronted as we are by the ubiquitous black Steinway or Yamaha behemoths of the modern concert hall.

Before Frycek [Chopin’s nickname] left Warsaw permanently he was familiar with all the finest European instruments. Early in his career he favoured Polish Bucholtz pianos and later those by the maker to the Austrian Imperial Court, Conrad Graf. Their light Viennese action and distinct ‘fluty’ tone was also preferred by Hummel. Liszt was known to demolish such instruments during the course of his recitals and required spares waiting in the wings. He bragged that he could be heard effortlessly in the back row at La Scala. Chopin had become familiar with the refined French Pleyel pianos before leaving Poland. He was to write from Paris to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski ‘Fortepiany Pleyelowskie non plus ultra’, the last word in perfection.

The tone of a Pleyel (upright or grand) has a seductive velvet quality to it, slightly diffuse, with light transparent trebles and a rich but clear mahogany bass. Liszt wrote of ‘their silvery and slightly veiled sonority’ and ‘lightness of touch’.

The puzzling descriptions of Chopin’s playing, his refined nuances, inimitable rubato, cantabile melodic line and delicate ornamentation ‘falling like tiny drops of speckled dew over the melodic figure’, according to Liszt, make absolute sense with the light action and extreme sensitivity of the Pleyel. ‘When I feel out of sorts,’ Chopin would say, ‘I play on an Erard piano where I can easily find a ready-made tone. When I feel in good form and strong enough to find my own individual sound, then I need a Pleyel piano.’1 He felt the single escapement mechanism, in contrast to today’s double escapement instruments derived from contemporary Erards, enabled his fingers to feel in more immediate contact with the hammers on the string, itself a testimony to the extreme sensitivity of his touch.

Some months after returning to Bath at the conclusion of the Polish contract, nostalgia for my Polish musical experiences inspired me to begin practising the piano again. I had always believed in the superiority of well-restored original instruments, and in an attempt to assist my imaginative recreation of Chopin’s sound world I purchased a restored Pleyel ‘pianino’ of 1844, a small upright much favoured by the composer. It was the type of piano he arranged to have delivered by donkey to the notorious Carthusian monastery at Valdemosa.2 The Italian opera composer Bellini, Chopin’s friend the French painter Delacroix, George Sand at Nohant and Madame de Balzac all purchased these delightful small instruments. His extraordinarily detailed notation reveals a composer obsessed with the nature of the sound he was producing.3 Many of these indications can only be adequately realized on the very different instruments of his time. The annual Chopin and his Europe (Chopin i jego Europa) music festival in Warsaw goes a long way to realising his original intentions where works by many composers including Chopin are performed by outstanding early keyboard players such as Andreas Staier on fine instruments of the period such as Graf, Erard or Pleyel.

1. Jean-Jaques Eigeldinger, Chopin, Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by his Pupils, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 26.

2. This [my] instrument is a small upright or ‘cottage’ piano of six and a half octaves in an elegantly proportioned case of ‘plum-pudding’ mahogany with fine ormolu decoration. Pleyel No. 11151 was originally purchased in 1844 from Ignace Pleyel & Compagnie, Facteurs du Roi, by a certain M. Leveau Vallée of Rouen for 1,000 gold francs (around €38,000 today). During lessons the pupil would take the Pleyel grand and Chopin the pianino, playing the orchestral part of his concertos or variations. They are rare compared to the number of Pleyel grands that have survived. It was restored by David Winston of the Period Piano Company in England. His workshop is one of the finest in the world for the restoration and building of copies of historical pianos and fortepianos. He restored Beethoven’s 1817 Broadwood, previously owned by Liszt and now in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. He also restored the Pleyel grand pianoforte No. 13819 that Chopin used in England. This instrument is now in the Alec Cobbe Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments at Hatchlands, the National Trust property in Surrey.

3. Chopin’s high level of detailed thinking about sound is clearly revealed in the definitive Chopin Urtext Wydanie Narodowe (National Edition) of his works still in process of publication. His friends often spoke of his terrible labours composing at the piano. This edition is edited with reference to all available editions and autographs with minimal editorial intervention by Jan Ekier (incidentally a pianist who entertained insurgent civilians and soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944). Chopin’s variant autograph sources and editions are a musical minefield for the perfectionist temperament and twentieth century single variant mindset. Chopin himself never played the same work twice in the same manner.

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