CHOPIN’S RECITALE, 11th NOVEMBER 2022 AT POLISH ART CENTRE IN LONDON (POSK)

Concert review by Paul Roberts:

ŁUKASZ FILIPCZAK'S DEFINITIVE CHOPIN

Last evening I travelled 60 miles to hear Łukasz Filipczak give a Chopin recital at POSK (Polish Social and Cultural Association) in Hammersmith. I would have travelled 160 miles. The recital was breathtaking. When on form Filipczak is a master, and in this recital he was at his impeccable best. The instrument was good but not great, and under many hands would surely have sounded indifferent. But Filipczak drew forth utter beauties effortlessly — indeed it is his sound world that is one of his finest attributes, his bel canto and his voicing so nerve-caressingly exquisite in his 5 chosen Nocturnes as to have his listeners on the verge of tears. This was musical artistry of the highest order.

Was his impeccable playing in the first half on account of his using the score? I have heard him on previous occasions unnerve himself, and his audience, through memory lapses. Yes, use the score, please! The wonderful Mazurkas Op.24 in the second half were from memory however, and Filipczak retained total control, displaying a complete mastery of the Mazurka rhythm, of that essential freedom that cannot be written down. Is it only Polish musicians who can do this I wonder? And the veiled quietness of his first encore, Nocturne in E flat Op. 9, was among the most beautiful piano playing I’ve ever heard. (Chopin, ever the great piano teacher, is on record as having wanted the left-hand accompaniment here to be mastered first - by itself and with two hands - so that each chord ‘would sound like a chorus of guitars.’ Only then, he said, is the pianist ready to add the bel canto right-hand line.)

Filipczak might take to heart a further comment from Chopin - indeed we all should. Of his Mazurkas he said ‘Do you think I’m satisfied with myself when I play them? Never! It has happened once or twice at an annual concert, where I felt inspired by the atmosphere in the hall; that’s as often as I should be heard, once a year. The rest is work!’

George Eliot’s tragic heroine Maggie Tulliver came to my mind during the recital. I’m researching material for my next book which is to be a continuation of my explorations of music and literature, the meaning of music in literature, and especially the uses to which it is put by novelists. So I’ve been reading The Mill on the Floss, in which music-making plays a small but vital part. Listening to Filipczak’s rendering of the essence of Chopin I was reminded of Maggie Tulliver for whom, unlike all of us in the hall, ‘there was no music any more, no piano, no harmonized voices, no delicious stringed instruments, with their impassioned cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame.’ I realized it was for that kind of musical experience that I went to hear Łukasz Filipczak, one whom I know to have the extraordinary gift of being able to liberate those spirits. Thank you Wu. Such rare music making is worth waiting for and traveling any distance to witness.