Last night I played one of my piano conversation evenings for a professional musician: the subject was beats, regular or not. I am fascinated that so many of the jazz musicians whom I have taught over the years are more tyrannized by the beat than most classically trained musicians, and I wanted to test the waters with this woman, a klezmer drummer.
I asked her to choose what composers she thought would be most interesting for our purpose. Chopin, Brahms, Grieg were her first choices.
So Chopin. I played for her the E-flat minor Polonaise, an early work not often played. Her reaction matched mine when first I heard it almost fifty years ago -- an experience I will never forget. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. The piece begins with a fragment and then a pause. Next comes a series of very quiet chords, no melody, and ritardando (getting progressively slower). In other words, not at all like a polonaise or any other dance, not even like a piece of actual music. This introduction builds and builds to an explosion of emotion before the actual dance begins. The contrast is almost terrifying.
This is exactly the experience I had when I first heard Rubinstein play it in Carnegie Hall. Even when the introduction repeated later in the work I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So unlikely, so powerful.
