Chopin: Rondo op. 1; Rondo à la Mazur op. 5; Rondo op. 16; Rondo op. 73; Piano Sonata no. 1 in C Minor, op. 4
Joanna Trzeciak, piano.
Pavane ADW7291. Recorded November 1992, Polish Radio. CD.—There’s a corner of Chopin’s output that most pianists simply don’t visit. The early rondos—op. 1, op. 5, op. 16, op. 73—sit in the shadow of the nocturnes and ballades, perpetually waiting. This disc, recorded at Polish Radio in November 1992, makes a case for them.
Joanna Trzeciak is the advocate here, and she’s a persuasive one. Polish-born, naturally attuned to the dance inflections that run through these pieces like a pulse—the mazurka rhythms, the slight lilt that separates Chopin’s native idiom from mere salon elegance—she brings an insider’s fluency to repertoire that might otherwise seem like juvenilia. It isn’t, quite. The C Minor Rondo, op. 1 already has that characteristic Chopinesque sense of the keyboard as something to be inhabited rather than merely played upon. Trzeciak understands this.
Her touch is light. Consistently, almost categorically light—which is exactly right for music that predates the heroic, storm-tossed Chopin of later legend. What you hear in these rondos is a young composer still in love with the instrument’s capacity for ornament and surprise, and Trzeciak’s fingers seem genuinely happy in that world.
The op. 5 Rondo à la Mazur gives her some trouble. The clumsy repeated-note passages—and they are clumsy; Chopin himself seems not entirely sure what to do with them—expose a certain thinness in her mechanism under pressure. Not a disaster. But you notice it.
The C Major Rondo, op. 73 is the disc’s centerpiece, really. Written in 1829 despite the opus number’s suggestion of late-period revision, it exists in two versions—for two pianos and for solo piano—and the solo version is the one here. “Very demanding of pianists,” Trzeciak writes in her own insert notes, and she’s not wrong. The opening flourishes announce real ambition, both compositional and pianistic, and she meets them with something approaching boldness. There’s also—this is harder to describe—a quality of longing embedded in the melodic lines, a reaching quality, and she finds it without sentimentalizing it.
The Piano Sonata no. 1 in C Minor, op. 4 is the disc’s most substantial offering and its most thought-provoking performance. The opening movement arrives not quite like a sonata—more like an improvisation that has decided, halfway through, to become one. Whether this is a flaw in Trzeciak’s conception or an insight into Chopin’s still-forming architectural sense, I honestly can’t say. Both, perhaps. The voice-leading throughout is scrupulously observed; the textures never cloud. The Menuetto—charmingly spiky, rhythmically alert—is the best movement here. And the Larghetto has a lovely quality of suspension, the left hand rocking gently beneath a right hand that wanders with apparent freedom but never loses its harmonic moorings.
The finale’s tempo is a question. Chopin marks it Presto. Trzeciak doesn’t quite get there. But—and this matters—her chosen speed allows detail to surface that a more reckless tempo would obliterate. A defensible choice. Not the only one.
Pavane’s production values are regrettable. Trzeciak’s own notes are informative, but the English translation is awkward, stumbling over its own feet at several points. And someone in the production process has managed to date the op. 73 Rondo to 1928—a date that would make Chopin’s compositional achievement considerably more miraculous than it already was.
None of this diminishes what Trzeciak accomplishes. This is specialized repertoire, uncommonly served. She serves it with intelligence and evident love. That’s not nothing—in fact, for music this neglected, it’s rather a lot.
