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Chopin died at the age of 39. How would he have developed had he lived as long as, say, his great contemporary Franz Liszt?

With two other composers who died in their 30s, Mozart and Schubert, it is impossible to imagine them surpassing the sublime heights they achieved in their lifetime. With Chopin it’s different. He would never have attained the all-round stature of Liszt but his late works do suggest that his music was beginning to take on a new dimension.

Did it need a new dimension? After all, he wrote hundreds of mazurkas, polonaises and waltzes that transformed modest dance forms into lyric or even epic poetry.

And let’s not forget the Nocturnes, where (with some help from John Field and Bellini) he created a new piano sound, and the Etudes, where he revolutionised keyboard technique. And as for the larger forms he worked in, he more or less invented the piano ballade and made the scherzo his own. But he could have gone even further, in at least two directions.

You mean he might have written symphonies or tone poems, or at least another concerto?

The older he got the more intimate his music became and ever less suitable for the concerto. He wouldn’t have written large-scale orchestral music either unless, like Liszt, he had made a special long-term effort to learn the technique. What I’m thinking of is the Cello Sonata he completed three years before his death – a masterly work and a clear demonstration that he could write superbly well for a string instrument. If he had met a violinist to inspire him he might have done the same for the violin. It’s not likely that he would have written chamber music without piano but he might well have had a go at a trio for violin, cello and piano.

But there is a Piano Trio in G minor Op.8.

Yes, but that was written when he was still a student in Warsaw, when he still had a lot to learn about string instruments and the classical forms required by chamber music at that time.

He seemed to manage pretty well with orchestral instruments and classical form in his two early concertos.

They are minor miracles by a young genius blissfully unaware of what he was up against. In fact, it wasn’t until he had settled in Paris (where he spent the last 17 years of his life) that he came to terms with sonata form in the Piano Sonatas and the Cello Sonata. After that he would have had no problems with a new piano trio.

Was there nothing left for him to do with the piano alone?

That reminds me of the other direction he was moving in. There are late piano works like the Polonaise-Fantaisie Op.61 and the Mazurkas Op.50 which transcend mere dance forms: it is visionary inspirations like these, together with the Berceuse Op.57 and the Barcarolle Op.60, which suggest that he would have had a whole new world of piano form to explore.

Further listening

There are two particularly interesting recordings of the two Piano Concertos: Krystian Zimerman with the Polish Festival Orchestra conducted by Fryderyk Franciszek on DG; Yevgeny Kissin (at the age of 13) with the Moscow Philharmonic conducted by Dmitri Kitayenko at a live concert in 1984 on Melodiya.

Further reading

The leading British authority on Chopin is Jim Samson who can be over-academic for the general reader but is comparatively accessible in his Chopin in OUP’s Master Musicians series.

Gerald Larner ©2007