In 1810, Frederic Chopin was born,

- by coincidence exactly 100 years before my mother,
in 1910.

In 1842 when he was just 32 years old, only about 6 years before his
early death, Frederic Chopin composed the now famous polonaise in Ab
major . His partner George Sands wrote passionately of it "The
inspiration! The force! The vigour! There is no doubt that such
a spirit must be present in the French Revolution. From now on
this polonaise should be a symbol, a heroic symbol”.
And in spite of Chopin’s desire to stay out of politics, the piece
has been referred to as the Heroic Polonaise ever since.
In 2010 (100 years AFTER my mother’s birth) when I was in my
mid sixties living in Leaside with BH, I asked myself whether I
still had the ability to learn and memorize a challenging classical
piece and I loved the idea of playing this polonaise. I didn’t
really think I would be able to play it all through and told myself
that even if I could perform the first section I’d be a happy guy.
I started work on it and found that it was even more wonderful than
I had thought. Each bar is a work of art and becomes a pleasure to
study and learn. It is a challenging piece with difficult fingering,
very fast runs and very large hand stretches. Practicing was going
well and I found I was still able to memorize the music as I
progressed, as I had done in my youth. I became comfortable with the
first section and ventured into the second, and eventually on to the
third. As I was working on this piece, ironically my
Dupuytren’s Disease began to assert itself quite aggressively in my
hands and my left 5th finger began to contract quite quickly over a
period of several months.
I tried somewhat frantically to stop the disease progression with
various applications of ointments, cold laser treatments, splints
etc. In late 2010 I finally convinced my family doctor that it was
time to visit the specialist for a possible surgical release of the
chords but when he eventually made the referral to Dr. Binhammer we
found his office was backed up for 6 months. We tried direct calls
from Dr. Mueller and some pleading for urgency on my part, all to no
avail. In the end my finger was so contracted it was unusable on the
keyboard and I had to give up working on the polonaise.
Finally I located Dr. Eaton in Florida, (the first surgeon in
N. America to study and practice the art of needle release of the
cords) got an appointment and flew down there Jan 13, 2011 where he
somewhat miraculously treated both hands with this needle
apo-neurotomy technique. This made a dramatic difference to my
affected fingers and I was able to resume serious keyboard playing
and started working on the polonaise again. Later in 2011 I went to
Germany for followup radiation treatment on my hands (and one foot)
and stayed with English schoolmate Terry Beedle in Frankfurt.
Terry’s a good musician and has a nice Yamaha baby grand piano. We
both played quite a bit and I was able to play the polonaise all the
way through from memory, at well below concert speed but still most
enjoyably (from my point of view).
It is emotionally and physically demanding to play the whole piece
and I never ‘performed’ it for anyone, simply playing it
(literally) for my own amazement and often thinking of Mr. Chopin,
the young wizard, in the process. However a few years later, in
2015, after I somewhat impressed myself with an exhausting
performance at home in Thornbury, I thought that I should at least
record the piece while I could still play it. However this was not
so easy, as just knowing the recorder was on interfered with my
concentration enough to jeopardize simply playing the piece. In the
end I never did make a complete and flawless recording and now my
hands have changed to the point that I will not be able to play it
again.
Recently, in Covid19 isolation on returning from Mexico in
2020, I was looking through some old recordings and it came to mind
that just maybe, on one occasion, I had left the recorder on and
recorded the whole piece to the end, even if there were mistakes in
it. But if so, I had never listened to it. So I started searching.
Eventually I did find a possible file that I thought could be
‘it’. At this point I was quite excited to see if this really was
the polonaise and also if it really would be me playing (I have
several recordings of it). I was really quite nervous as I got
the thing to play and confirmed that it WAS the Heroic polonaise.
Then I became quite excited at the level of the performance .. way
above what I could reach now .. and then came a worrying doubt about
whether that could even be ME performing it. Soon I recognized some
of my own quirks in the playing and then about 2/3 of the way
through, the whole performance disappeared into chaos .. taking me
with it, - wondering what the heck I was listening to. What happened
of course was that I ‘lost it’ by momentarily losing concentration
.. perhaps remembering that the recorder was on or something.
Playing without the music, I couldn’t get it back on track from
where I was, so I started again a few bars earlier and (thank
goodness) kept going to the spectacular ending (which I was SO happy
to hear, as I play it in my own different way).
During this process, it occurred to me that my close friends
and fellow musicians and even my family, except my long suffering
and departed parents, have never really heard me play classical
pieces even though this was what my early training and passion was
all about.
I was always quite reticent about playing the classics to an
audience, mostly because I was reluctant to ask that people
commit time to listening to a ‘serious’ performance and on the other
hand I was not keen to play a ’serious’ piece without putting myself
fully into the music, - in which case it is very disruptive to have
to break concentration with any kind of casual interruptions,
movements, noises, sneezes etc. So I almost exclusively have played
the classics only for my own enjoyment when I could fully lose
myself in the music without thinking about an audience. Even as a
child, my parents were never allowed in the room while I was
practicing.
However, after working on this polonaise for about 5 or 6 years,
and, in the process, losing it then finding it, losing it again then
finally discovering it again one last time, now frozen in a single
final performance, I have decided to post this snapshot version and
make it available to my family and a few close friends. As I’m
not playing live, you are free to listen, sneeze, or listen to a
part of it or just ignore it and it won’t affect the performance
which was recorded in solitude in Thornbury on April 23, 2015 in my
71st year :)
From my point of view it is a kind of tribute to what my
hands could really do and to all the years that I was able to work
with my hands and have access to the magic world of music.
It's also a salute to the many people I met and the experiences I
had that resulted from the music I played and participated in. This
goes from the excitement of my first professional house gig at the
Zanzibar strip club in Toronto(!); being on stage with Chuck Berry;
hanging out briefly in the different world of Janis Joplin; standing
beside Buffy Sainte-Marie while she performed an impromptu a capela
piece in Cree to Mohawk children in the hallway of the Akwesasne
Freedom school; hearing the unforgettable voice of Richie Havens
live in the studio; traveling around New England with the Mandala
Folk Ensemble; playing the blues (love it) with Cordon Blues;
traveling to far off places with so many musicians in different
genres; hosting many amazing music parties at home where magic
happens every time; to simply playing Christmas carols with family
and friends.
And I must also mention the early school experience of taking
over the twice daily chapel services on the pipe organ at
Ridley College, playing all the hymns, psalms, processionals etc
entirely by ear at the age of 17 - while at the same time playing in
my very first group with the school jazz band. This was all quite
‘out of the blue’ for me but helped me to recognize that perhaps I
did have an unusual combination of musical aptitudes that could be
combined in different and interesting ways. These things and
countless other such events have made me a much richer person and I
feel extremely grateful for all of it.
But zooming in again, I have had so much enjoyment from this
one magnificent piece that I do hope that you might experience even
a small taste of this beautiful expression of Chopin’s genius from
listening to this enthusiastic if imperfect performance. The
chaos/la-la land section is still in there, exactly how it occurred,
and it may startle you if you are listening. Somehow I didn’t want
to edit it out and now for me, it provides it’s own unique and
certainly surprising experience of where and who I was then. I must
confess I have come to like the way I stumbled, staggered around a
bit wondering where I was, recovered and continued, noticeably a bit
more focused!
Thanks for your indulgence if you are still with me, and here
without delay I present my hands at 71 as they were after surgeries
and radiation playing Mr. Chopin’s Heroic Polonaise - still as
heroic as it will always be!