The full audio of Episode 8 is in the works and will be released VERY SOON, with 9 & 10 following close on its heels. Thanks for your patience!

4th ballade is results of massive improvisations

This is a relief to me to learn that classical music is NOT stuck in a rut trying to enforce an orthodoxy based on what some experts believe Chopin or other composer would have played their compositions. There are so many great pianists today who through their own improvisational talents enhance the original or even stumble onto what Chopin was seeking. A beautiful composition can be made even more beautiful as time goes on and the world changes. New and better instruments, new techniques, ... new ears inspired by old music to add their own contribution and make it relevant for today...

This is what Reinterpreting Chopin by B. Syroyid does.... It is an album based on improvisations based on works by Chopin

I think that it is not entirely accurate to say that  Chopin „hated” composing. However, his letters reveal a complicated relationship with the process: one marked by frustration, emotional intensity, and a relentless pursuit of perfection. While composing was not a source of unbridled joy for Chopin, it was also an essential part of his identity and artistic expression.
The Struggles of a Perfectionist
Chopin was a meticulous perfectionist, often dissatisfied with his work. He revised tirelessly, frequently discarding material that did not meet his exceptionally high standards. In one letter, he lamented:
"I am writing and erasing and rewriting again, and in the end, I am dissatisfied with myself.
This obsessive attention to detail often made composing feel like a daunting and exhausting task. His creative process was a cycle of trial and error, reflecting his desire to achieve a balance between technical brilliance and emotional authenticity.
Chopin’s fragile health amplified the difficulty of composition. The act of translating his innermost feelings into music was physically and emotionally draining. He described the burden of inspiration in almost painful terms:
"You cannot imagine how it exhausts me to write something that satisfies me, and even then, I am left uncertain."
For Chopin, composing was not just an intellectual exercise but first of all an emotional journey. It required him to dig deeply into his psyche, which could leave him feeling depleted.
Despite the struggles, Chopin recognized that composing was an integral part of his being. In a letter to his friend Julian Fontana, he confessed:
"When I cannot compose, I feel as though I have lost a part of myself."
This duality—the pain of creation and the necessity of self-expression—defined his relationship with composing. While the process was often grueling, the act of completing a piece brought him a sense of fulfillment.
Chopin’s ambivalence toward composing can best be understood as a reflection of his perfectionism and sensitivity. On one hand, the process was fraught with difficulty; on the other hand, it was through composing that he expressed his deepest emotions, preserved his heritage, and created timeless masterpieces.
Rather than hatred, it is more accurate to describe Chopin’s relationship with composing as one of intense struggle—a struggle that ultimately gave his music its extraordinary depth and emotional power.

Even as the fantasy is meant to be an improvisatory piece, his fantasy in F minor has to one of the most finely and meticulously crafted pieces in the whole Chopin repertoire... Excellent Video as always Mr. Laude !! :)

Well, I am old, so for years Chopin’s classics were „engraved  in stone” in my brain. To the extent that when some performers started to incorporate variations, I would look with disbelief at the radio or tv, angry that they played falce music. Even when I learned about Chopin improvisation skills, I was still sure that only the „official” versions were correct. Time was passing and things started to modernize. Two of polish brilliant jazz pianists, Adam Makowicz and Leszek Możdzer setup a concert in Carnegie Hall, playing  jazz variations of Chopin music. This performance at Carnegie Hall in 2004 was a new opening for me because it was a perfect example of how Chopin’s improvisational spirit lives on. They took Chopin’s music and reimagined it with jazz, blending classical beauty with modern creativity. It felt so spontaneous and full of energy, just like how I imagine Chopin might have played in his time.

I love how Chopin’s music often used Polish folk themes, and I think Możdżer and Makowicz added their twist by mixing in jazz harmonies and rhythms. Their performance was really brilliant  thanks to their technical skill and the emotional depth that makes Chopin’s music so timeless.
Watching them play, I felt like they were having a conversation through the piano, just like Chopin’s improvisations must have been—responsive and alive.
I recommend performances like this because they keep Chopin’s legacy fresh and relevant. His music isn’t stuck in the past—it’s alive and inspirational.

Such playing will not help classical pianists winning in Warsaw I suppose,  but its a lot of fun to listen to.

I love these Chopin Podcasts!

I honestly thought the E-flat Nocturne sounded absolutely THRILLING with Chopin's included variants! WONDERFUL! When are we going to be privileged with a recording of Chopin's music WITH some of the "authentic additions and variants"? NOT soon enough, I'm afraid.

I need that shirt

Supports even more the case of Chopin being the progenitor of Jazz

Most gifted composers are doing the same thing

This is exactly true and an excellent insight. Other composers including Cochran report exactly the same fact in interviews. Improvising is essentially the default state, and compositions are often diminutive of the more expansive developments during improvising. Mozart also wrote in his letter that his improvisations are far more advanced than his compositions but added that they wouldn’t be suitable as written works as the performer would go mad trying to interpret, or words to that effect.

Loved this episode!

As a jazz pianist improv to me is just composition without writing anything down. If I want to write it down then I'll do some improv over and over, write down what I like and then form it into shape from there. I hope going forward we can come up with better ways to teach music which will incorporate the technical knowledge we've developed in classical music and the language, improv and harmony knowledge we've developed in jazz and use the best parts from each.

I love the tempi of these Nocturnes.   I talked with another aspiring pianist that bemoans the fact that too many of his scores are played too fast.

Excellent work, Ben.
Thank you ever so much!

Yes, I know this feeling extremely well.  It's because the inner ear is "holographic" so to speak-- it tracks lines (and internal sounds) in a much more complex way than you can at the piano-- lines have a life of their own, all the notes have a very deep and highly patterned connection among each other, and so on.

Part of the problem is that the modern piano is detuned, whereas internal sounds are always harmonious-- so when you try to reproduce a dream or audio hallucination on the piano, it sounds wrong.  What might sound beautiful to others will always sound as sour as a lemon to the one who originally heard the ideas.

Improvisation has been very central to who i am, since i was 16.

Oh great, that you covered the improvisation aspect in Chopin, Ben! :)
Such a huge part of good musicianship in the 19th century (and earlier), yet so little mentioned because we have only a handful of actual material naturally, given the nature of improvisation art.
Studying Chopin's life and musicianship, I got the impression that he very much preferred to be free and unrestricted by rules as a musician. But once he went through that unloved process of writing his ideas down and perfecting the piece, he probably preferred that people respect the "soul" that the piece got and, indirectly, acknowledge the torturing effort that it took him to produce it.
You certainly know this anecdote about Liszt showing off by wildly improvising a Chopin piece in Chopin's presence. It's said Liszt's changes vexed Chopin, who then told Liszt to play his "music like it was written or not at all". I'm not sure right now how authentic that story is, or if it is one of the many legends, but it sounds very much like the two of them.
On the other hand, it's also said that Chopin "never played any of his pieces the same way twice". Again, I'm not sure if any contemporary from Chopin's lifetime was in the position to confidently make such a claim (who was around to hear each and every salon/concert/home performance of Chopin for 25 years?). Though, assumed that this is true, it does give Frederic a bit of a hypocrite flavour at first. But then, it doesn't. He himself was certainly the only person who could improvise his own music without changing the specific meaning, colour, flavour and feeling that he wanted it to have. The harmonies of all the pieces that he published himself are so incredibly refined that it would take a mind-reader to know what exactly he meant to say. As far as I know, we know only about one pianist that he gave the "licence" to play his music as he pleased, that was the musical genius boy Carl Filtsch, because Chopin felt completely and utterly understood by the young boy (which is astonishing and makes the early death of Filtsch so much more tragic).

However, what I meant to say with all my scribble was that I don't think Chopin's Opus pieces should be changed/improvised at all (existing variation from the master's hand aren't changes, they still came from Chopin's own mind). No-one really knows what his harmonies made Chopin feel/think, or what he tried to express. But personally, I would hate the musical sobs, outcries, laughters, screams, chatter, raging, boiling blood, whispers, sweet-talk... all that world of human emotions that I can clearly hear in his music to be destroyed through incompetent improvisation, incompetent not because the musician was unskilful but unknowing or ignorant. If Liszt, who knew Chopin so well, couldn't satisfy him (given that story is true), how can we, 180 years later?

Having said that, I would be more open when it comes to Chopin's unpublished pieces from his drawers. Pieces he did not think of as worthy for the public and "unfinished" in his brutally self-critical opinion. Just as an experiment, to see what could be done by talented improvisers, that would be refreshing!