Chopin lovers can’t meet their hero, but this pianist got to do the next best thing

WARSAW – Pianist Eric Guo did the whole lot but shuttle thru time to commune with Chopin.

On March 1, the day celebrated as Frederic Chopin’s birthday, the 21-year-old Canadian performed one live performance at the birthplace of the Romantic-era piano virtuoso and composer, on a piano constructed all the way through his lifetime. Then he went into the city for a 2nd efficiency, all the way through which he used a piano that when belonged to Chopin.

“You cannot get more connected to Chopin than being in his birth place,” stated Guo.

A pupil at the The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Guo used to be invited to give the particular performances to mark Chopin’s 214th birthday after successful the 2nd Frederic Chopin Competition on Period Instruments. He gave a couple of recitals on the day, one at the manor area in Zelazowa Wola the place Chopin used to be born in 1810, now a museum, and the different at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw.

“It’s probably exactly the same room he was born in, so, it’s, you know, spiritual connection,” Guo said. “I really feel one with Chopin.”

Poland’s Fryderyk Chopin Institute — which makes use of the Polish spelling of the composer’s title — began the period instrument competition in 2018 to advertise historically-informed performances of Chopin’s song that use nineteenth century pianos or trendy reproductions. It’s held each and every 5 years.

It’s a part of a much wider pattern towards length tools, as mavens and audiences check out to determine what the song items gave the impression of to their personal composers. Some declare that adjustments in how tools are designed and performed these days have erased subtleties in the song; others simply revel in a brand new spin on acquainted classics.

Pianos made in the 18th and nineteenth century have been more practical, lighter and smaller than trendy tools, with narrower keys and lighter strings. The result’s they play extra softly than trendy pianos.

“These period pianos, they all have the ability to play as soft as possible and I think still there’s something there, there is still a core inside,” Guo advised The Associated Press final weekend.

In a length software “I like the colors that it can create and the sound is, you know, out of this world,” stated Guo. Modern pianos, against this, generally tend to prioritize robust, tough sound, he stated.

Contemporary grand pianos are strengthened with steel to face up to the drive of a lot tauter and thicker strings and bigger and extra advanced hammers mechanisms, for a legitimate that carries neatly in massive live performance halls, but additionally has a special high quality.

Guo enjoys taking part in each. “It works both ways: the period helps the modern and vice versa.”

In Warsaw, Guo carried out a solo model of Chopin’s Concerto in F Minor on a modern reproduction of an 1830 Pleyel piano made via Paul McNulty, and the Preludes on Chopin’s last piano, an 1848 Pleyel. Chopin’s personal piano, Guo stated, has a “velvet” sound and makes it conceivable to get the “kind of touch that Chopin would have really sought.”

Chopin’s song calls for subtlety from each software and performer, Guo stated. “He always emphasized that everything should be with ease and always free, and never to produce a hard sound, and never for the sake of virtuosity. Virtuosity, technique serves the music.”

That’s not to say the music is easy. “Chopin knew about the piano and he wrote for the piano” and a lot of his work is “just technically taxing, exhausting, he really demands a lot,” Guo stated.

Whether Chopin was actually born on the day he celebrated as his birthday is a matter of some dispute among his biographers. His birth certificate bears the date Feb. 22, 1810, but his family celebrated on March 1.

Chopin was considered a musical genius from an early age, and in 1830 left Warsaw for Vienna to broaden his education and his audience. He eventually settled in Paris, giving concerts, teaching the piano and composing music, some based on Polish dances like the polonaise and the mazurka. He died on Oct. 17, 1849 and was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. His heart is at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.

Guo said people in the tumultuous 21st century need music more than ever.

“All those wars going on, fights: music really bonds us, unites us as a humanity and society. Kind of heals us, cures all the stresses and all the challenges.”

Following his competition win in Warsaw in October, Guo’s schedule is busy with concerts from Japan to European countries, to the United States. He’s hoping to finalize plans for concerts in China, his family’s ancestral home, this fall.

“Schedules are quite packed and yes, more than before, but I’m still who I am, you know, I’m still living, surviving, and I’m human still, despite everything.”