5 Songs

Gdzie lubi Op.74 No.5 (1829)

Pierscien Op.74 No.14 (1836)

Wojak Op.74 No.10 (1831)

Piosnka litewska Op.74 No.16 (1831)

Sliczny chlopiec Op.74 No.8 (1841)

Of the four composers represented on this CD by their songs, Chopin was by far the least ambitious in the art of setting words to music. As he said when urged to compose more for the voice, “Just leave me to my piano: that’s what I do.” Although he wrote songs over a period of at least 16 years – the earliest of the 19 surviving examples dates from 1829, the latest from 1845 – he attached little value to them and made no attempt to get them published. It wasn’t until 1857, eight years after his death, that they appeared in print (as Op.74), and for decades after that they were still more likely to be heard in Liszt’s Chants polonais, a popular set of solo-piano transcriptions, than in the original.

Not one of the songs Liszt chose to transcribe, Gdzie lubi is the earliest of Chopin’s eight settings of poems by his friend Stefan Witwicki. It is also one of the most sophisticated, at least in the sense that it is through-composed, changing not only its tune and its harmonies for the middle stanza but also its dance rhythms, from waltz to mazurka, and adding more mazurka rhythms in the brilliant little piano postlude. Pierscien, another Witwicki setting written six years later for Maria Wodzinska, is presented as a comparatively simple mazurka – too simple for Liszt, who transformed it into a passable imitation of the piano piece Chopin might have written with the same material.

Woljak, the last of the three Witwicki settings in this group, is a heroic inspiration written in Vienna early in 1831, possibly in reaction to the events in Warsaw in November 1830. Chopin was unable to take part in the uprising but, as he said, he could “at least beat the drum” – as he so effectively does here in a ballad which, if it is scarcely equal to the Erlkönig comparison regularly applied to it, certainly develops a galloping momentum. Although it is sometimes attributed to Witwicki (who quoted it in the preface to his collection of Piosnki Siellski in 1830), the text of Piosnka litewska was actually translated by Ludwig Osinski from a Lithuanian original. Through-composed in folk-song idiom (even if the idiom is Polish rather than Lithuanian), affectionately characterised and wittily eventful, Chopin’s setting is one of the most accomplished of his songs. If there seems to be some erotic significance in the snatch of mazurka, where the metre briefly changes from 4/4 to 3/4 on the mention of the boy friend, the Zeleski setting Sliczny chlopiec, an adoring love song charmingly dancing in mazurka rhythms throughout, confirms that indeed there is.

Hulanka Op.74 No.4 (1830)

Pierscien Op.74 No.14 (1836)

Wojak Op.74 No.10 (1831)

Piosnka litewska Op.74 No.16 (1831)

Sliczny chlopiec Op.74 No.8 (1841)

Of the four composers represented in this programme by their songs, Chopin was by far the least ambitious in the art of setting words to music. As he said when urged to compose more for the voice, “Just leave me to my piano: that’s what I do.” Although he wrote songs over a period of at least 16 years – the earliest of the 19 surviving examples dates from 1829, the latest from 1845 – he attached little value to them and made no attempt to get them published. It wasn’t until 1857, eight years after his death, that they appeared in print (as Op.74), and for decades after that they were more likely to be heard in Liszt’s Chants polonais, a popular set of solo-piano transcriptions, than in the original.

With Hulanka, one of the two songs in this group that are included in the six Chants polonais, Liszt made an interesting choice. A strightforward setting of a simple drinking song by Chopin’s Warsaw friend Stefan Witwicki, it seems to offer nothing to the pianist – except, that is, oberek rhythms and Lydian harmonies. And that is all Liszt needed to create a new and sensational keyboard mazurka, though not so much in Chopin’s image as in his own. Pierscien, another Witwicki setting written six years later for Maria Wodzinska, is a kujawiak not much more sophisticated than the oberek of Hulanka but reflecting so much of the authentic Chopin personality that Liszt was careful not to betray it while elaborating on it.

Woljak, the last of the three Witwicki settings in this group, is a heroic inspiration written in Vienna early in 1831, possibly in reaction to the events in Warsaw in November 1830. Chopin was unable to take part in the uprising but, as he said, he could “at least beat the drum” – as he so effectively does here in a ballad which, though scarcely equal to the Erlkönig comparison regularly applied to it, certainly develops a galloping momentum. Although it is sometimes attributed to Witwicki (who quoted it in the preface to his collection of Piosnki Siellski in 1830), the text of Piosnka litewska was actually translated by Ludwig Osinski from a Lithuanian original. Through-composed in folk-song idiom (even if it is Polish rather and Lithuanian), affectiontely characterised and wittily eventful, Chopin’s setting is one of the most accomplished of his songs. If there seems to be some erotic significance in the snatch of mazurka, where the metre briefly changes from 4/4 to 3/4 on the mention of the boy friend, the Zeleski setting Sliczny chlopiec, an adoring love song charmingly dancing in mazurka rhythms throughout, confirms that indeed there is.