September 13, 2007

My Encounter with Chopin

The Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, where the heart of Chopin was buried.

6:30 PM: The following day of September 3, 2007 I woke up early in the morning to visit the Church of the Holy Cross. I would like to return to this catholic church again to appreciate its architect and its inspiration to the poles in Warsaw. It is here that Chopin's heart was buried according to his wish.

In front of the church stands Jesus Christ carrying a cross on his back, signifying that he is shouldering the burden of the sin on behalf of the people. It was in this church that Chopin came to pray frequently with his family in his youth.

A priest was giving his sermon inside the church. It was very ritualistic. There were more than a dozen of people inside. Some knelt on the floor to pray, others were meditating deeply. The largest concentration of catholics in proportion to the population is in Poland.

Chopin's heart was buried to a pillar of the Church of the Holy Cross

I turned my eyes to look for the place that Chopin's heart was buried. It was at one of the left pillars. All the great Poles found their names to this church as a testimony for the love and honour they had bestowed to Poland.

Chopin spent the first 20 years of his life in Poland before leaving the country forever and settling down in Paris. His father Nicolas, a French man who married his Polish wife, advised Chopin to leave Poland in the wake of a political uprising against Tsar Russia.

Living abroad would not only advance Chopin's musical career but would also help cure his fragile health, Nicolas thought. Chopin was always suffering from poor health as he contracted tuberculosis when he was barely 16.

He went on to conquer the musical scene of Europe with his unique compositions, very pianistic and very Polish. Before him nobody else had arrived to this new breaththrough of pianistic style, which demanded virtuoso technique of playing. Most important of all, Chopin's music is poetical in nature.

Chopin died in 1849 at the age of only 39. On June 25, 1849, about five months before his death, he wrote a letter to his sister Ludwika asking her to visit him in Paris. He knew that his days were numbered.

"Dearest Life, If you can manage to do so, come. I am weak, and no doctors can help me as much as you. If you have no money, borrow it. If I get on better, I can easily earn it and give it back to the person who lent it to you, but at the moment I am completely cleaned out, and can't send you any. My place here in Chaillot is big enough to contain all of you, even with a couple of children...

"My friends and well wishers here believe that the best medicine for me is for Ludwika to come here. So try to get a passport."

Ludwika did manage to pay a visit to Chopin with her family and witnessed his last moment on his death bed. He died on October 17, 1849.

Before his death, Chopin expressed his wish that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. Also, he would like his heart to be returned and buried in Poland.

Members of the societe des Concerts sang the Requiem at the Chuch of Sainte Madeleine, where the funeral service was held for Chopin.

Ludwika carried Chopin's heart, keep in a bottle, back to Poland, where it has been laid to rest in the Church of the Holy Cross ever since.

Chopin's apartment where he spent his happy youth playing concerts and composing his early pieces.

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September 12, 2007

A Sunday evening concert in Lazienki Park in Warsaw, where the Chopin monument towers above all. 

11:15 PM: Last week I travelled to Poland for a second time of my life. My first trip was in 2003.

Again, I was looking forward to breathing the air that Frederic Chopin (1810-1839) used to breathe. I would like to feel and appreciate the environment and the Polish culture into which he was born and spent his formative years as a young pianist and composer. I would also like to listen to the Chopin music in the Polish soil.

I asked my guide who would be the greatest Pole in 1,000 years. Naturally, the names of Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie sklodowska or Marie Curie, Pope John Paul II and Chopin propped up. Many poles would love to name Pope John Paul II as the greatest Pole ever.

But my choice is definitely Chopin. He was one of the greatest composers of piano literature. I grew up playing Chopin's Nocturnes, Polonaises, Ballads, Etudes, Preludes and Mazurkas.

It was Sunday, September 2, 2007. Fortunately, I arrived atthe Lazienki Park in Warsaw in time for an open air evening concert. Szezepan Konezal, a local pianist student, started to play a Chopin's Edude, followed by a Scherzo.

The atmosphere was pleasant and the music sang through the cool air. Yes, if you want to listen to Chopin music, you must listen it in Poland, where you also feel the heavy weather, see the greenery and the baroque buildings lining up the old streets of Warsaw.

The music of Chopin is magical because it speaks directly to your sense. You can't find enough words to describe its beauty. It is the beauty that represents the  Romantic ideal.

Another angle of the Chopin monument, which shows his handsome but very sad face.

The Chopin monument dominates the Lzienki Park. During World War II, the Nazis brought down the old monument and took it away in iron scrap. They would like to replace it with a monument of Richard Wagner instead.

If you approach the Chopin's monument closely, you'll see a handsome face at his prime. He sits under a weeping willow, mermersing in his composition. The weeping willow is the symbolic tree of Poland.

How did he look like in reality? Eugeniusz Skrodzki wrote his one of his memoirs about the look of Chopin:

"Seeing him thus, slight in height, poor in build, with his chest sunkin, one feared that, like his sister Emilia, he might fall ill with tuberculosis.. He has a high lofty forehead and gentle eyes full of expression, which was beautiful when you looked into them, but which were not in themselves of striking beauty, and which did not blaze with the light of genius.

"His hair was thick and luxuriant, very curly like his father's, and dark with slightly reddish lights. His large nose made his face an outstanding one, but taken altogether his features could not be said to be handsome; neverthelesss, Chopin's face made an extremely attractive impression...

"Chopin had a strikingly small foot and shapely leg, and beautiful whitem, carefully tended hands, with pinkish giners, which he often laid in his lap with what might have seemed a certain ostentation."

 In front of the monument is a pond with a shape of a heart. This symbolises that the heart of Chopin, although he spent the last 19 years of his brief and tragic life abroad, always remained in Mother Poland. 

The iron hand of Moscow

As we walked around the monument, my guide stopped me to show the peculiar look of the weeping willow. Its trunk looks like an ugly hand stretching above Chopin as if it would like to squeeze him to death.

My guide told me that the hand represents the Russian ambassador in Paris who would like Chopin to sign an important document which recognised Russia's sovereignty over Poland. If he signed the paper, he would be allowed to return home to Poland.

Of course, this was something Chopin would never do. Chopin was a patriotic person, from head to toe. 

The Pianist

I also visted the Museum of Uprising, which houses the relics of one of the most painful periods of Poland during Nazi rule. Warsaw was almost depopulated. Its buildings were destroyed by more than 90 per cent.

In a corner of the museum, I got a glimpse of a picture of a handsome man and took his picture. He turned out to be Wladyslaw Szpilman, a famous Jewish Polish pianist working for Warsaw radio. He was a great pianist, who championed the music of Chopin. He went through the suffering of the Nazi occupation and witnessed the Jews being forced to live in harsh conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Roman Polanski made a film out of the real life's story of Szpilman in 2002. It was a great movie.

In the movie, you can see Szpilman, starred by Adrien Brody, hang on his life my a thread. He survived by living among the rumbles of torn buildings, devastated by Nazi dynamites.

One day, he tried to find a tool to open his canned food in one of the deserted buildings. He ran into a German captain. He was shocked, believing that his life would come to an end. The German captain wilm Hosenfeld asked who he was. He replied that he was a pianist.

There was a piano right in front of them. Hosenfeld told him to go ahead to play something for him on the piano.

Szpilman walked slowly to the piano and started to play Chopin's Ballad in G Minor. It is a beautiful piece that could unearth your innermost feeling. Much to his surprise, Hosenfeld liked his playing. He spared his life and gave him food.

It was a very touching episode. I hope my ability to play some piano will save my life in a critical situation one day.  

A street of Warsaw through which Nazi army marched into the capital and destroyed virtually almost everything.

I cannot remember the name of this Warsaw street. But it leads to the Academy of Science and a statue of Nicolaus Copernicus on the right and the Holy Cross Church to the left.

My guide told me that Polanski used the scene of this Warsaw street in one of the scenes in The Pianist. The German troops were shown walking along this street, flanked by sturdy buildings.