The musical soul of the US now stricken through New Orleans' tragedy, we grieve in ways it seems even music might dare not address. But may I recommend Chopin's mazurkas as played by William Kapell. The dark, dreamy harmonies of these Polish dance tunes mourn and embrace the tragic ironies of life with dignity.
Great art can be like narcolepsy, abducting the beholder into a near dream state, and so it is with Kapell's interpretations of Chopin's neglected works - the mazurkas, with their subtle harmonies seemingly borrowed from angels. Not a few believed that until Kapell, no one really understood Chopin's intentions. In 1995 when the recording series was finally released (42 years after Kapell`s death), all previous interpretations of the mazurkas were stood on their heads.
Under Kapell's command they become ethereal - not the brash misunderstandings which had previously sufficed as the high water mark. Kapell`s purity renders a majesty and grace devoid of ego with delicate touch, with the grace of a bird's wing, tempting the listener to believe that a piano might have no moving parts. Kapell explores the range possible on a Steinway, some passages told in a nearly inaudible whisper. Where some minor key mazurkas modulate to major keys, Kapell's genius shines. He as much as dissociates - it is as though Kapell were several degrees away from the performance, quoting someone else`s recollection, selflessly animating the thoughts and stories of a people who lived generations ago on another hemisphere.
From an article on this website:
The sixty mazurkas are based on the dance's three main forms: the mazur, oberek, and kujawiak. One-half of them are composed in major keys, the other half in minor, with many moments of modality. The Chopin mazurkas form one of the great libraries of ethnically inspired art music. They are difficult to interpret; besides their own specific rhythms, they require a fine sense of rubato. The English critic of Chopin's day, Henry Chorley, wrote, "They lose half their meaning if played without a certain freedom and license, impossible to imitate, but irresistible if the player at all feels the music." Liszt remarked that "to do justice to the mazurkas, one would have to harness a new pianist of the first rank to each one of them." These works explore a harmonic kingdom which is unusual even for Chopin. Some are modal, with many subtleties in contrapuntal treatment. Arthur Hedley observed, "The Mazurkas contain beauties which Chopin reserved for these intimate tone-poems alone. Every kind of light and shade, of gaiety, gloom, eloquence and passion is to be found in them."
In the epoch-making four mazurkas of Op.6, the twenty-year-old Chopin announces to the world his unique Slavic genius. Jean KIeczynski says, "In these first mazurkas at once appears that national life from which, as from an inexhaustible treasury, Chopin drew his inspirations."
Kapell made waves indeed, a young upstart who fought with his elder, Rubinstein; he let him know he found his treatment of the mazurkas harsh, and also that he missed notes. Kapell well might know, for his genius allowed him to read music on a flight for the first time, and be able to competently play it by the time the plane landed.
From an article by Tim Page, Kapell's only biographer:
America's first great pianist has finally been accorded the tribute he deserves. In a sumptuously produced, exhaustively documented, and altogether thrilling new set of nine compact discs, BMG Classics (formerly RCA Victor) has assembled virtually everything ever recorded for the company by William Kapell (1922-1953), who was a celebrated artist by the time he was in his twenties and who was killed in a freakish plane crash at the age of 31.
It would not be entirely accurate to suggest that Kapell has been forgotten in the 45 years since his death: There have been a number of reissues (including some so-called "pirated" performances that are excluded from this set) and the University of Maryland named its biannual piano competition after him. Still, this release will come as a revelation for most listeners, for we are finally permitted a more or less complete access to Kapell's legacy, and it is nothing less than staggering.
Here is Kapell in all of his manifestations -- in unfailingly patrician and meticulously thought-through performances of Chopin; in soulful, impassioned chamber music recordings with Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose and Edmund Kurtz; in dazzlingly virtuosic renditions of the finger-busting showpieces of Aram Khachaturian and Serge Prokofiev. Not to mention superb Bach, matchless Copland, a lithe, radiant performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat and many others -- 10 hours of glorious music-making, all in all.
As was the case with so many other musicians of his generation, Kapell was of Russian Jewish descent, born in Manhattan and educated in the New York City public school system. He won his first competition when he was 10; the prize was a turkey dinner with the pianist (and occasional movie star) Jose Iturbi. At the age of 19, Kapell made his professional debut in New York, with a well-received concert at Town Hall. In 1942, he signed an exclusive contract with the all-powerful Columbia Artists Management and shortly thereafter began his recording career for RCA.
The young Kapell was groomed as something of a glamour boy; his dark, fierce good looks, somewhat reminiscent of John Garfield, encouraged such a presentation. But he was a serious artist from the beginning -- practicing up to eight hours a day, keeping close track of what the young American composers were up to, forever struggling to transcend his repertory of flashy works that had brought him fame. He played one of those pieces, Khachaturian's Piano Concerto, so convincingly that his recording became an enormous hit; unfortunately, the concerto became so inextricably associated with Kapell's performance that it is now rarely revived. (After all, what pianist in sound mind would want to go up against such a formidable ghost?)
By the late 1940s, Kapell had toured the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia to immense acclaim and was widely considered the most brilliant and audacious of young American pianists. In 1947, he made a happy marriage to the former Rebecca Anna Lou Melson, with whom he had two children. With maturity, a new sense of spaciousness made itself manifest in Kapell's pianism and he began to set aside time for work with the artists he most admired, studying with Artur Schnabel and playing with Pablo Casals and Rudolf Serkin.
He spent his last summer in Australia, where he played 37 concerts in 14 weeks, appearing not only in Sydney and Melbourne, but all over the continent -- in places with names like Bendigo, Shepparton, Albury, Horsham and Goolong. It was in Goolong that Kapell played his last performance, shortly before setting off on his doomed return flight to the United States. The plane hit King's Mountain, a few miles outside San Francisco, on the morning of Oct. 9, 1953; all of the crew and passengers were killed instantly.
Because most of Kapell's early recordings were on 78 rpm records -- a format that was all but obsolete by the mid-'50s -- many of his performances have been unavailable for half a century. Nor were his LPs in print for long. Indeed, by 1960, there wasn't a single Kapell recording left in the catalogue and secondhand stores began to charge up to $250 for the scarcest titles. Despite a few short-lived reissues that subsequently appeared, for too many years you had to be rich, lucky or a longtime collector to know the art of William Kapell.
Yet the fascination continued; pianists such as Eugene Istomin, Gary Graffman, Leon Fleisher and Van Cliburn, among others, acknowledged Kapell's influence and tapes of "live" performances circulated among collectors. Kapell's widow -- now Anna Lou Dehavenon, a social anthropologist in New York -- deserves much of the credit for helping to keep her husband's name alive. Unlike the penny-wise and pound-foolish surviving relatives of some other great musicians, she always encouraged and supported small and not necessarily wealthy record labels in their endeavors to bring unknown Kapell performances to the public.
Here is a site from which you can buy either a single CD with the mazurkas, or the entire collection of Kapell's works. From that website, may I recommend five minute-long samples of my favorites:
- Mazurkas (5) for Piano, B 61/Op. 7: no 2 in A minor (3:11) Real Audio or Windows Media
- Mazurkas (4) for Piano, B 77/Op. 17: no 2 in E minor (1:51) Real Audio or Windows Media
- Mazurkas (4) for Piano, B 77/Op. 17: no 4 in A minor (4:20) Real Audio or Windows Media
- Mazurkas (4) for Piano, B 89/Op. 24: no 1 in G minor (2:37) Real Audio or Windows Media
- Mazurkas (4) for Piano, Op. 41: no 2 in E minor (2:18) Real Audio or Windows Media