His music needs the
greatest lucidity in presentation, and naturally a certain
elasticity of phrasing. Rhythms need not be distorted, nor need
there be absurd and vulgar haltings, silly and explosive
dynamics. Chopin sentimentalized is Chopin butchered. He loathed
false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed by Bach and
Mozart, who was nurtured by the music of these two giants, could
never have indulged in exaggerated, jerky tempi, in meaningless
expression. Come, let us be done with this fetish of stolen time,
of the wonderful and so seldom comprehended rubato. If you wish
to play Chopin, play him in curves; let there be no angularities
of surface, of measure, but in the name of the Beautiful do not
deliver his exquisitely balanced phrases with the jolting, balky
eloquence of a cafe chantant singer. The very balance and
symmetry of the Chopin phraseology are internal; it must be
delivered in a flowing, waving manner, never square or hard, yet
with every accent showing like the supple muscles of an athlete
beneath his skin. Without the skeleton a musical composition is
flaccid, shapeless, weak and without character.
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