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>> ACCLAIMED PIANIST BRINGS THE MUSIC, AND THE STORY, OF CHOPIN TO GEORGE MASON

November 12, 2009 12:36 am

By MARCIA A. CHIDESTER

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Internationally acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Siegel doesn't want his audience to just listen to the Chopin pieces he'll play this weekend at George Mason University's Center for the Arts.

Rather, he'd like them to invest themselves in the man he thinks is one of the greatest composers of all time.

Get to know Frederic Francois Chopin as protege. As a master pianist. As dance man.

"I want people to get more out of Chopin than ear wash, where things go in one ear and out the other," Siegel said.

At "Chopin the Patriot," the latest of Siegal's series of Keyboard Conversations, music lovers and novices alike will have the opportunity to do just that.

MUSICAL TALK

Siegel began Keyboard Conversations--his own style of departing from the standard music-recital fare to mix tidbits of background information with classical compositions--17 years ago.

Figuring audiences would like to know the motivation behind the music, he dished up composer lore and theory, sprinkled with short musical examples, then performed each piece in its entirety.

Musical beginners got to know an artist much better than if all he did was plink out the tunes, Siegel said. And, seasoned music lovers often discovered a fresh perspective on their favorite composers.

Siegel's blend of spoken word and rhythmic melodies delivers a better musical experience, said Linda Apple Monson, director of keyboard studies at George Mason Univer-sity.

"It makes listening more rich, more interesting, because the audience knows what to expect," Monson said. "They've heard a story about the piece and what was going on in the composer's mind when he was writing it."

Downsizing the information from lecture length to sound bites keeps Siegel's performances from becoming the equivalent of a yawner music appreciation class.

"You don't sit here with a notebook," Siegel said.

Siegel dedicated 2009 to Chopin in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth.

The ardent Polish patriot, who died at 39, was unique because he concentrated solely on piano music, Siegel said. He never wrote a symphony, opera or a string quartet.

"He was a most-unusual composer, whose quality of work is so incredibly high that he's on anybody's short list of the greatest composers," Siegel said.

Chopin holds the distinction of transforming two Polish dances--the polonaise and the mazurka--into works of art, Siegel said.

The dances are also Chopin's memoirs.

"He wrote them throughout his life," Siegel said. "So they are his musical diary."

Marcia Chidester is a Fredericksburg writer.