Chopin wrote the two Polonaises, Op. 40 during a troubled period in his life: the year 1838 marked the beginning of his love affair with George Sand, crowned by a trip to Majorca, and at the same time the worsening of his illness. In Chopin’s letter to Julian Fontana, we read that the Polonaise in C minor reflects the pessimistic mood in which the composer was then plunged. The Polonaise in A major is, on the contrary, a manifestation of a ‘healthy spirit’, identified by commentators as a ‘Sarmatian’ spirit.

The Nocturne in A flat major, Op. 32 (published in 1837), which precedes the Polonaises, is one of Chopin’s most elaborate nocturnes, with a dramatic climax in the middle section, ‘framed’ by singing fragments reminiscent of a balladic ‘tone’. That tone is also evident in the Barcarolle (publ. 1846), which once tempted one to look for literary content in it: Iwaszkiewicz associated it with an image of a night-time boat ride on a pond overgrown with reeds, and Stromenger with the opening scene of Krasiński’s Przedświt [The Daybreak].

Attempts were also made at one time to add substance to Chopin’s mazurkas, including by Pauline Viardot-Garcia, the author of an arrangement of 12 mazurkas for voice and piano (the texts were supplied by Louis Pomey). The collection includes two pieces from Op. 50 – No. 1 (as ‘Dance of Tallara la lalla’ and No. 2 (as ‘Voici que j’ai seize ans’). These two pieces, with typical mazurka rhythms and maintained in cheerful major keys (G major and A flat major), are complemented in the Op. 50 collection by the kujawiak-like, nostalgic Mazurka in C sharp minor.

Listening to Karol Kurpiński’s Polonaise in G major, one of three polonaises he published in 1812, one can appreciate the distance that separates this work, maintained in a naïve post-classical style, from Chopin’s masterpieces of the genre.

In the flood of nineteenth-century Polish salon mazurkas, the Mazurka in B minor, Op. 11, written in 1966 by Karol Mikuli, a pupil of Chopin and guardian of his legacy (author of one of the earliest Polish collective editions of the composer’s works), stands out for its faithful imitation of Chopin’s style, both in the sphere of melody, harmony and texture, and in its expression, alternately dramatic, nostalgic and cheerful.

The approach of the eminent Viennese pianist Leopold Godowsky to Chopin was quite different: in his showpiece transcriptions, he wished to achieve the Lisztian ideal of ‘transcendental pianism’, i.e. without technical difficulties. This gave rise to the idea of reworking several Chopin études into pieces to be played by the left (weaker) hand. In the case of the C minor Etude from Op. 10, the task was easy, as in the original it is the left hand that ‘leads the voyage’, so it was enough to ‘add’ the leading motives of the right hand. A clever trick that once appealed, it can probably still appeal today…

Aleksander Tansman – the Łódź-born composer who spent almost his entire life in exile in Paris – did not place such high demands on the performers of his piano works as Godowski did. Published in 1933, Sonatina No. 3, together with its two predecessors and three larger piano sonatas, forms a collection of works in the neoclassical style, courting clarity of form, simplicity of tonal harmony and melodiousness.

Kazimierz Serocki’s Suite of Preludes from 1952 also refers to the neoclassical style, although it does not lack more modern elements, including ‘atonality’ heralding the composer’s later dodecaphonic attempts.

Magdalena Dziadek