Chopin's Kingdom | A Conversation At The Piano With Garrick Ohlsson 

"Even Chopin played badly still sounds pretty good." I love that quote. In fact, I've lived by it. 😄

"Chopin is the greatest of them all, for with the piano alone he discovered everything." - Claude Debussy

How wonderful to listen to someone talk about Chopin with the reverence he deserves. When I was young I was fascinated with Scriabin and considered Chopin lightweight. Now I realize it was because of the simple pieces that were in the books I had. When I saw that movie, Impromptu, I was amazed at the beauty and sometimes ferocity in his music. I checked out everything and played it all thru, even difficult etudes I played at 100 times slower speed, whatever I could do. I begged my teacher to assign me the C# etude and spent hours trying to get my left hand to sound like a cello. I was more fascinated with the Eb minor etude and would practice it with no pedal to get the inner voices quiet. I really grew up with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms but Chopin would send me to this other world of beautiful melodies and harmonies. As much as I love Scriabin there is something in Chopin, deeper, spiritual, different from anything else quality that I really cannot describe with words, but Ohlsson certainly knows and does a great job of describing it. Great video.

I love listening to Garrick Ohlsson talk about Chopin! Or about anything, really. What a great pianist, teacher, and person. :)

Most people don't realize just how insanely advanced Chopin's counterpoint and use of fundamentals is within all of that creative poetry and romanticism. I'd put him on the same level of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven when it came to the use of proper fundamentals and counterpoint. The genius in his music is just how well utilized it was as to seem to be simultaneously creative and improvisatory, all the while within a fundamental framework.

What a rewarding half hour of conversation.

Geez, stuff like these conversations make the entire internet worth it. Thanks.

He has a real gift for clear communication. Wonderful.

“You don’t play Chopin like spelling” is the best explanation for his music

That piano, the music, the aesthetic, and the pianist makes this video perfection

5:09 I once had a lesson with Gert Hecher: We were playing through and reflecting on Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage when he stopped and told me that “being a concert pianist is a form of spiritual prostitution.” The host’s question reminded me of that moment.

Garrick's speech and vocabulary is amazing

Garrick Ohlsson is a man of great erudition and imagination, he describes the compositional style of Chopin with compelling insight. A fascinating interview.

I'm coming to really love Garrick Ohlsson through these tonebase interviews

This is without question one of the most enjoyable, rewarding and inspiring interviews ever recorded.

What a fantastic interview what an interesting man, I could listen to him speak for hours

What scholarly insight Ohlsson has! It is great to see yet another performer/free-time musicologist who has really done their research! Inspirational to an aspiring musicologist like myself!

Amazing interviewer also. Very knowledgeable. Mr Ohlsson speaks for himself...

Wow first time I have watched tonebase and the interviewer is great also. Not pretentious, knowledgeable but does monopolizes with talk. Garrick is expressive of course and great knowledge but how often do you find someone who interviews this well? I will be back to this format!!! Very enjoyable.

Great comments by Garrick Ohlsson. Loved it, especially as regards to Op. 41 Mazurkas. As a "light-weight" Polish folk music specialist I acknowledge my roots in Chopin's pieces beginning with Op. 6 and ending with (posthumous) op. 68. Excellent video and thanks for the Brahms connections, since he (Brahms) took it to another level. "F. Chopin: My kingdom is small, but within it I am genuinely king." As an American, I don't hold with kings, :"We have a Republic, as long as we can keep it." In Chopin's time, things were different, and I respect it (with limitations). I am an American, and I respect our Republic, but this is a music vid, not political. Parallel 5ths are a staple of Polish folk music, FYI. Illegal, or not. I used them in my arrangements of Polish folk music. Some are recorded and will be consigned to the hell of music....or not.

I notice his piano has it’s music board pulled off… no music stand. He’s like someone doing the NYT Sunday crossword in pen. That piano has such a lyrical sound.

Thank you for this interview, I was so longing for a conversation at this level! I could listen to them all day and wouldn’t get bored. So much knowledge and insight. Even though the interviewer interrupted him several times, it didn’t get annoying bc with his musical knowledge he managed to meaningfully connect to all my those things that Ohlsson had to say. It’s like like-minded people who just got enthusiastic and that was the only reason for interrupting each other. Very inspirational.

Great interview! Thank you

100% excellent interview. Many thanks.

Wonderful interview! I really enjoyed it!

Thanks for this lesson about Chopin, piano and music by a true master teacher, great pianist and over all, an artist ....like Garrick Ohlsson!!

This is AWESOME!!! He’s a great speaker & pianist, love his passion for Chopin!!

Hugely enjoyable, with many profound insights.

Amazing interview!!! Amazing musician!!!

Such a wonderful and informative interview. Both tremendously comfortable and knowledgeable in their conversation about music and the composers. Much appreciated, thank you.

Great questions, so many wonderful ideas in the answers. I almost wanted to slow it down at half speed. Thank you for this!

Thank you for this marvelous presentation, I an trying to deepen my appreciation of "classical" music. What a gift!

This was wonderful.

A delightful, enlightening, and educational interview on Chopin and briefs of other significant European piano music composers.

So much for Artur Schnabel and his "right-handed genius". Well said! Well done!

Fascinating

So cool to listen to this conversation

MIND TOTALLY BLOWN. ❣️

I love how he states that he is not a snob, but gets very snobby about how he treats other musicians' interpretations. Very interesting conversation for sure!

Delightful conversations for anyone who knows the repertoire and has reflected upon it and played a good deal of it. Lively rêveries musicales with the utmost cultured musician America has given to the "classical" musical world: Garrick Ohlsson!

That was FUN!👍

Delicacy in playing and listening. Thank you.

"You don't play Chopin like spelling." Huge.

Excellent questions.

17:56 - also Schubert... he was intending to take lessons in contrapunctal writing just before his death.

Wonderful.

I love his plain vanilla American speech! Then he breaks into Beethoven or some Bartok-ian sound - and he is totally the language of music. But he's not from Europe, South America, or an Asian country. He's like someone who lives nearby, totally comprehensible. There's no other culture standing between him and me and the music. I love Garrick Ohlsson.

Such a rich interview. Thank you 🙏🏼

I learnt so so much in 30 minuts!!

This man is such a great genius. Funny, and brilliant.

Musicians as actors~ Absolutely right on!

Chopin such genius!!!!!!❤❤❤

Wonderful interview, and I enjoyed it very much. Thanks for sharing your views about Mozart. It put a smile on my face, as I have a similar opinion. Subscribed

fantastic

Thanks

Maybe the only two pianist I can listening talk about music and composers all day are Andras Schiff and Garrick Ohlsson.

Such insightful thoughts. There are so many connections between all the composers and their works. Everything is related. How could you play Chopin without knowing the works of Bach and Mozart? And how could you play Bach without knowing the works of Chopin...

As far as Chopin's music containing Bach influence, his Etude Op. 10 No. 4 is basically Bach especially if you slow it down. Chopin was a huge admirer of Bach and you can hear it throughout a decent amount of his pieces if you break them down.

One of my first LP acquisitions was the Complete Polonaises by Ohllson (1973): at the time, a somewhat unusual "breakout" ""album"" choice of repertoire -- the two ultra-well-known ones aside . I enjoyed his talk here immensely.

I like to think of Chopin not just as a man nor as a composer, but as a microcosm of the musical spectre. This kind of genius and understanding of music is basically occult knowledge.

I would love to hear more depth in the connections Chopin has to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms etc. with Garrick Ohlsson

very good

Yesss

Enjoyable

I love that Oscar Wilde quote!

Ivan Moravec is the consummate interpreter of Chopin from my perspective. He set the standard that the finest young pianists imitate. I recently started working on the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Paganini and find Brahms note choice to be exquisite and hauntingly beautiful.

At 16:00 you should consider that....after op.111 came the Diabelli Variations op.120, arguably his most daring composition!!!

Great Video. I'm trying to work out the brand of Piano. Is it a Bosendorfer salon piano. Great Sound. (Boudoir piano)

Good question, about the voyeurism of some Chopin. I can imagine the Ab Ballade or Barcarolle never performed before more than a single listener.

I love (but also pity the deaf who needs the subtitles) that the auto-generated subtitles get so much wrong, like the fourth Scherzo becomes the fourth scarecrow (!) Should I write a piece in this new genre, Scarecrow no.1 in John Major? Reminds me of "The Short-Tempered Clavier" by PDQ Bach.

Great interview! I just spotted a few things: - It seems the quote "My kingdom may be small, but in it I am truly king" might not actually come from Chopin. I could not find it in any source/book, and on the Internet there aren't many results if you search this phrase - also most of the results reference either Garrick Ohlsson or this video. I think it may be a misquote of this one (by Marceli Antoni Szulc, from the book "Fryderyk Chopin i utwory jego muzyczne"): "The popularity of Chopin was constricted to salons; but in them he was the solitary king" I translated the above from the Polish original: "Popularność Chopina ograniczała się na salonach; ale za to był w nich królem samowładnym" That's the only source I could find that mentions anything similar. But if there are more sources, I'd be happy to hear about them. - At some point Garrick Ohlsson mentions that "Chopin was probably jealous of Liszt", but this may not necessarily be true. The original author of this theory is Harold C. Schonberg (born in 1915, so long after Chopin's death) and he wrote it in his book "The great pianists" (first edition 1962). The original quote from the book is: "(...) there was always a tinge of jealousy and spite on Chopin's part". But this book seems quite biased and contains a lot of subjective phrases like "maybe", "probably" etc. For example, in the same book, the author calls Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, Liszt's partner, "a very stupid woman" (this is a direct quote from the book). Also, Schonberg doesn't mention where he gets the information from (we don't know if he heard that from someone connected to Chopin, or if it's just his personal view). I haven't found any other sources that would mention this alleged "jealousy". - You can't really say that Liszt was a rockstar and Chopin was just a "poor little sickly thing" - even though Chopin did not give concerts, he can definitely be called a "rockstar" of the salons - people overall described him as very charming, charismatic etc. when performing in salons. - I would not agree you can call Chopin a "snob". He liked the salons (they were also a necessity if he wanted to make a career), but at the same time he distanced himself from them, so that they don't affect his music or personality. This can for example be seen in this letter from Stephen Heller to Robert Schumann: "I do not see Chopin at all. He is wallowing in the aristocratic mire up to his ears. he is refined to the highest degree. [...] He prefers high salons to high mountains, the stifling fumes of gaslight to the clean mountain air, but he composes - which is simply incomprehensible - completely the opposite, that is extremely beautifully and profoundly" - Lastly - this is my personal opinion - I think musicians should not project their feelings onto music - I believe it should be the opposite: it's the music that creates feelings inside you, and you just follow them. If you do this, you can relax (that's how I understand what Chopin called "letting yourself go") and go with the music, as opposed to going against it (and trying to impose/project something onto it). But of course this is a personal view and everyone can have a different view. Once again thanks for the great interview!

What's the piece being played at 22:22?

The delicacy of Chopin is also relative to the small and delicate-sounding pianos of the time, and the soft sound of the hammers. Today, pianos are powerful and dynamic

For me, as a Swede... classical music means what I would call "Vienna-classic" (roughly between 1750 - 1800, with Mozart and Haydn etc. Befor that Barogue and after Romantic, with Beethoven with one foot in "Vienna-classic" and the other foot in the Romantic era.

"Baroque, classical and romantic are axes as much as periods"

What brand of piano is playing Ohlsson?

What’s the piece at 1:45? Edit: Nocturne Op. 55 No. 2

"This is the so-called right-hand composer" - priceless.

What is the number of the "modulating prelude"?

24:00 He's playing Brahms Op.76 part 2

Can anyone read the name on the fallboard of the piano? Doesn't look like a Steinway to me.

What a wonderful conversation. However I believe Chopin, most certainly, was not jealous of Liszt’s ability to ‘get the girls.’ Chopin was not weak as much as he was sensitive and feminine, with the most sublime results.

🌹🌹🌹❤❤❤

what piano melody is that 30 seconds into the video?

Whats the piece at 1:44?

what is the piece at 1:45

That “wildly romantically piece” is full on John Fields, who never ever gets credit for inventing the Prelude and that wonderful flowing sound that Chopin often included in his work!!! Just saying!!!

What is he playing at 1:44?

Feel lotsa’ Bach. But Genius of Chopin

Eloquent. Funny. A bit arrogant. Brilliant. Fabulous

i would count debussy as a fabulous melodist. and honestly, im going to say it, Liszt, is a fabulous melodist as well. many more

Who is the interviewer? This is just fascinating.

lets not forget he lived til 39......!!!definitely up there with the Monsters!!

28:50 What does he mean?

1:44 please?

32:00

30+ mins have never gone so fast.

Sounds like this chopin guy made some pretty decent stuff

His voice kinda reminds me of David Gilmours 😁

Who is the interviewer?