Chopin’s City: Warsaw is living tribute to the piano legend

Warsaw, Oct 15 (PTI) If the city of Warsaw were a person it would be Frederic Chopin. The 19th century piano virtuoso lived here for the first 20 formative and most productive years of his life and the city and its people continue to live through him 200 years later.

As one arrives in the Polish national capital at the Warsaw Chopin Airport, the city opens itself to those with a musical ear like a sheet of Chopin’s nocturnes - flowing freely in a rhythm interspersed by intensely emotional expressions.

Earlier this month, Warsaw welcomed piano prodigies from all over the world for the 19th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition, which runs from October 2-20. And a collective sense of pride and brotherhood for the pianist was rekindled in Polish hearts in a city that is living homage to the legend.

Frederic Chopin, born on March 1, 1810, was barely six months old when he came to Warsaw from Zelazowa Wola with his French teacher father Nicholas Chopin and pianist mother Justyna Krzyżanowska.

The next 20 years of his life are marked across the face of the city in places where he studied, performed, lived and loved.

The quietness of the Skwer Bohdana Wodiczki park in central Warsaw is often broken by notes of piano, wafting from the windows of the Frederic Chopin University of Music - earlier named Warsaw Conservatory where Chopin studied music from 1826-29.

Peter Januszko, 27, assiduously paints each note of a waltz by Chopin on the walls of the university. The notes on the paper appear to him no more than shapes but he fondly talks about Chopin as a “sound that has always been around”.

“I don’t understand music but I do know Chopin when I hear it. He is part of every Polish person’s life,” Januszko told PTI, standing next to a pile of paint, brushes, and a few books on Chopin’s music.

The university is adjacent to the Frederic Chopin Institute and the Chopin Museum at Ostrogski Palace.

While the institute is dedicated to researching and promoting the life and works of Chopin, the museum houses items like personal notebooks and a small pencil, a candy box, dried flowers from his deathbed, and several original musical manuscripts.

Visitors can get a glimpse of the virtuoso’s life through his letters to romantic partner George Sand, and the last piano he used, an 1848 Pleyel.

In a concentrated campaign to strengthen the pianist’s legacy and observe 200 years of his birth, the city in 2010 placed 15 “musical benches” at landmarks associated with him.

One such bench - snuggled between the Chopin Museum, the Frederic Chopin Institute, and the University - fills the air with a 30-second piece of Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52.

Similar benches are placed near the Radziwill Palace, now the Presidential Palace, where 8-year-old Chopin played his first public concert on February 24, 1818.

Another bench is placed at Krasinski Square, former location of the National Theatre, where Chopin performed his last concert in Warsaw in October 1830 before leaving for Paris.

Every five years, Warsaw hosts one of the world’s biggest piano competitions, attracting “Chopinists” to the city like moths to a flame. Many Polish admirers of his works, who were introduced to Chopin’s music, admitted to have remained loyal to him despite their diverse professional careers.

Krzysztof Kalinowski and Gabriela Komorowska, a scientist couple at the Warsaw University of Technology, have been together for nine years, partially bound by their love for Chopin’s music.

“He is part of the culture from the start when you are learning in primary school. If you are in music classes, you get to know more about the music of Chopin. There are school trips to Zelazowa Wola,” said Kalinowski, an electrical engineering researcher.

While Kalinowski learned piano in primary school, his partner and material scientist Komorowska has remained more of a listener of Chopin.

“I had a piano at home but no talent for music. I am more interested in listening to Chopin. We keep going to his concerts at Lazienki park in the summer and I listen to his music even in my headphones. But I never tried the piano,” she said.

Known for being home to several city landmarks, including the Palace on the Isle, Myslewice Palace, and the temple of Diana, the Lazienki Park hosts free public concerts of Chopin’s music from May to September under a large bronze statue of the Romantic master.

For Kinga Su, a Polish visual art based in France, Chopin is a “feeling of home”, while chemical engineer Maciej Wajsprych started learning piano at seven and prides himself in being an amateur pianist.

“It somehow happens that many Polish families have a piano, at times it is kind of a furniture, but mostly it is an instrument of music. That’s what happened in my family, we have a piano so I started learning and then Chopin happened,” Wajsprych said.

While there are year-around Chopin concerts at one place or the other across the city, it takes different shades of Chopin when the piano competition is running.

Aleksander Laskowski, spokesperson for the Chopin Institute, said Chopin’s music is “essence of the soul” for every Polish person.

“Our spiritual life is beautifully embodied in Chopin’s music. It resonates with who we are -- all the different emotions, what we call żal, which is a kind of happy sadness, very difficult to translate. All the feelings we have are in his music. When we listen, those feelings come out and stay with us more intensely. That’s why we love this music so much,” he said.

Laskowski added that during the competition it is the only topic of conversation across the city.

“You talk to a taxi driver, e’ll know the participants. You go to a bar, you can order a Chopin drink. You go to a café-there’s a Chopin cake. Everywhere you go, you see something connected to Chopin and the Chopin Competition.” Rumory Bistro serves a “Chopin Menu” - inspired by the flavours appreciated by the pianist himself and drawing on Wojciech Bonkowski’s book “Chopin Gourmet". Spanish restaurant Barceloneta serves dishes inspired by Chopin’s visit to Majorca in 1838-39.

A number of hotels in the city have prepared desserts inspired by Chopin’s music - from Hotel Warsaw’s chocolate souffle with the addition of egg liqueur and peanut praline to “Lavender Sonata” at DoubleTree by Hilton that combines velvet lavender cream with intense blackcurrant gummy, creating a flavour composition based on delicate contrasts.

Chopin flows through the city’s air, its land, monuments, and cuisine like one of his piano pieces - full of energy, introspection and melancholia put together in a heady mix.

The city couldn’t belong to any other person but Chopin, whose body lies buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris but his heart rests at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.

The bench placed right outside the church rings out one of the musician’s most famous pieces - Marche Funebre, or the Funeral March - a dirge that remains synonymous with the pianist’s genius and a lasting tribute to the Polish legend.

(Manish Sain was in Warsaw at the invitation of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, in collaboration with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute and the Polish Institute in New Delhi).

PTI MAH MIN MIN MIN