Crucial to our existence, Air is ever-present yet impossible to see. Its energy can cause rapid change such as shifts in the wind’s direction and fluctuations in temperature. Air is essential to life because it contains oxygen, but it also has destructive attributes when storms are created. Wind and turbulence has excited composers over the centuries and inspired them to compose some of the most…
This my 74th Piano Stream. I’m playing Video Game Music on Piano later today on Wednesday. Come check it out and request a song you’d like to hear in twitch chat.
The Liszt x Chopin mini fanfic is already published and finished 😉
Franz had never had any problems flirting with a beautiful girl without hesitation. But when it came to this guy, he couldn't put two words together and it was all really pathetic.
Sir Anthony Dowell performs Beliaev's first solo from A Month in the Country. London, Royal Opera House, 1980
"It fascinates me that, as Dowell originally danced the role, Beliaev’s first real dance step was (a) quadruple pirouette corkscrewing from attitude back via passé and back into attitude back (b) winding that raised foot through développé into piquée arabesque penchée - this subtly unorthodox penchée as seen here, with the single line of the arms and shoulders not continuing the line of the raised leg and torso so much and bisecting it. It perfectly sums up Beliaev’s unconscious grace and alien presence. When the ballet was young, we never realised it was a hard step. Dowell himself has said recently 'That step’s like the wind - you can’t always catch it". Alastair Macaulay
Chopin used pencils not only to make notes in his diary, but also for drawing and to add comments to his pupils' scores. He was known to break them in anger while giving piano lessons. As Frederick Niecks, one of Chopin's first biographers, wrote: 'Madame Rubio [... informed me that Chopin was very irritable, and when teaching amateurs used to have always a packet of pencils about him which, to vent his anger, he silently broke into bits!]
I’m sure he’d break all the pencils and chairs if I were his student. 🤣
2. Chopin’s tie pins and pendant 📍
'Impeccably dressed, he wore, after the latest fashion, a navy-blue tailcoat with gold buttons, fastened over a white waistcoat, pearl-coloured trousers with clasps. A long tie, fastened with a diamond pin, encircled his neck' - wrote Chopin's pupil Georges Mathias
Choppy was very fashionable! ✨
3. A copy of Chopin’s armchair in his last apartment 🪑
This rosewood armchair is the only authentic piece of furniture belonging to Fryderyk Chopin that survived after the auction of items from the composer's last apartment. It was bought by Chopin's close friend, the artist Teofil Kwiatkowski.
A portrait probably made after a pencil drawing that Winterhalter produced from nature on a May 1847. 👇🏻This one!
In a letter to his family, Chopin related: 'Yesterday I posed for Scheffer again, and the portrait is coming along. - Winterhalter has also done a small pencil one for my old friend Planat de la Faye (about whom I wrote to you once).- A very good likeness. Winterhalter is no doubt known to you by name, a good honest man of great talent'
😍😍😍
6. Chopin’s piano 🎹
Woah😚
7. Chopin on his deathbed😿 (Teofil Kwiatkowski, after 17 October 1849)
In this picture, besides Fryderyk, we see Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Chopin's sister Ludwika Jedrzejewicz, Wojciech Grzymala, Fr Aleksander Petowicki and Kwiatkowski himself.
Aww🥹🥹🥹
8. Chopin’s travelling hat box 🎩
Choppy kept his hat in this box when travelling. He was known for his sartorial punctiliousness. In a letter to Julian Fontana, he wrote: 'apart from that, I forgot to ask you to have a hat made for me by my Dupont on your street. He has my measurements and knows what light ones I require. Have him give it this year's form, not overstated, because I don't know how you dress these days!’
Omg I don’t even know hat box is a thing, cute! 😍
9. Chopin playing the piano 🎹 (Teofil Kwiatkowski, 1847)
Bradley Bradshaw headcanon: Bradley mostly taught himself to play the piano, but Ice helped him, having learned the instrument as a child, and taught Bradley how to play classical pieces, including “Frederick fu-freaking Chopin”*, as Ice put it.
Bradley is proud to have so much of Goose and Mav in him, but he’s also so proud that he has that piece of Uncle Ice with him forever.
*Tombstone reference
Oh, my heart, this is the sweetest!!!
Bradley and Uncle Ice 🥹
I like to think that the two of them had a really close relationship, and that Bradley really clung to that after his falling out with Mav. Losing Ice was really painful for him because it felt like losing another piece of his connection to his father 🥺