Chopin, mazurka in A minor, op 17 No 4

It has already been said that Chopin was not fond of crowds. He was uncomfortable with those unknown people who curiously watched him from their seats, and so he told on more than one occasion to his fellow friends, Liszt among them. However, during his first years in Paris, the composer appeared in public much more frequently than he would later become accustomed to. Perhaps, it was an imposition of life. Of course, the self-exiled Pole had a pressing need to make himself known in a strange land.

The collaborative concerts
In 1833, when he was 23 years old and had only been in Paris for a little more than two years, he performed at least three times before a large audience. It had all begun shortly before, when in December of the previous year he appeared for the first time in the company of Liszt to perform, together with the pianist and composer Ferdinand Hiller, the allegro from Bach's Concerto for three keyboards. On April 2, 1833, in collaboration with Liszt again, he performed several pieces at a large benefit concert, and the following day, he took part in another concert for four pianos, together with Liszt and two other pianists.

The intimate evenings
For sure, Chopin felt most comfortable in the salons of the nascent Parisian bourgeoisie, or at the soirées offered by the Polish nobles, exiled like him. There he could improvise, or deliver the most refined or personal, presenting before a small audience the first audition of a short work that he would have finished, perhaps that very evening. The Polish nobility, of course, would have greeted with effusion the longing for the land that flowed from Chopin's hands if the composer made them listen to a mazurka, for example, fresh from his most personal and intimate world.

Chopin (1810 - 1849)

1833, a fruitful year
Among several other works, that year he finished the Etudes of opus 10, published the Concerto in E minor and the three Nocturnes of opus 9. He also finished a new series of mazurkas, those of opus 17, which he published the following year in Paris, adding four more pieces to the collection that, at the end of his life, will have 47 published mazurkas. Posthumously, another ten will be added, those the author did not consider worthy of being published.

Mazurka opus 17 N° 4
Originally from the Mazurian region, the mazurka (mazur in Polish) is a dance in 3/4 rhythm. It is danced, and sung. It also can be sung while dancing. But from their national and popular character, Chopin took merely the rhythm, whose cadence requires a more or less prolonged support of the second or third beat of each measure. With a brief duration, their singing is pure Chopinian invention, thus refining the dance, "ennobling its melodies," in Liszt's words. They are generally enveloped by a harmonic mist, and the last piece of opus 17 goes a bit further, to the point that at the beginning it is difficult to recognize the key in which it is written. It would seem that Chopin is improvising, in a salon, for his Parisian admirers. But he is not. Everything is prodigiously controlled.

The rendition is by the American pianist and composer Michael Glenn Williams.