Musical mystery tour as Chopin’s Piano finally gets to be played to an audience

After much delay audiences finally get to see the stage version of a musical detective story about Chopin’s Majorcan piano.

Jennifer Vuletic as Franz Liszt and Aura Go as Frederic Chopin. Picture: Aaron Francis

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The Spanish holiday island of Majorca was a bit behind the times when it came to piano making in the 1830s, so when Frederic Chopin and his mistress the French writer George Sand spent the winter of 1838-39 at the monastery of Valldemossa he had to make do with a modest locally made instrument on which to write his 24 Preludes.

Juan Bauza’s piano did the job, however, and it stayed in the cloister cell after the composer left until the great Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska found it 70 years later on a Chopin pilgrimage, bought it and had it shipped to Berlin.

Then, when Paris fell to the Germans in 1940 and the musician fled her home there, it and her historical instrument collection fell into the hands of the Nazis. And from there it disappeared. All we are left with is a 100-year-old photograph of her seated next to it.

This is the subject of the book, Chopin’s Piano, by Musica Viva’s artistic director Paul Kildea, and, after a two-year delay due to Covid, audiences are finally getting to see the stage adaptation of this musical detective story, featuring outstanding performances by Australian pianist Aura Go and actor Jennifer Vuletic, both of whom play multiple characters in what is subtitled “A journey through Romanticism”.

After Kildea wrote the book he presented the story as an illustrated lecture and, finally, a collaboration with director, actor and writer Richard Pyros. It was to have premiered for the closing tour of Musica Viva’s 2021 season, but instead subscribers got to see a film version online.

At the heart of it, of course, is Go’s survey of the 24 miraculous miniatures, some of which were composed in Majorca. This is a major achievement – to play them so beautifully while, in the first act, taking on the character of Chopin while Vuletic, using a mainly convincing European accent, seamlessly assumes the roles of Bauza, Sand, Franz Liszt – a friend and admirer of Chopin – and the French painter Eugene Delacroix, who completed a portrait of

Aura Go plays more than the piano in the production. Picture: Aaron Francis

the couple at the height of their affair.

The characters get more varied, and occasionally humorous, in the second part when we meet Landowska in some effective scenes featuring striking lighting effects from Richard Vabre and sound by Kelly Ryall. After Landowska flees Europe she settles in the US with her assistant Denise Restout – another sizeable cameo for Go – and we meet New York art collector Peggy Guggenheim and sculptor Constantin Brancusi in a pastiche of how 20th century culture has moved on from the Romantic era to harder-edged realism.

How Chopin’s music should be played is discussed as well, Kildea showing how pianists and musical promoters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries often overegged the pudding to make it into something bigger and more powerful than it was ever intended to be.

In all there is much food for thought in this entertaining and beautifully staged and designed production and if you are quick you may be able to book a ticket for the show at City Recital Hall on Monday, July 17, at 7pm.

If not I would recommend a copy of Kildea’s book, your headphones and Maria Joao Pires’s recording of the 24 preludes on your favourite streaming service.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Chopin’s Piano (Musica Viva)

• STARRING Aura Go, Jennifer Vuletic

• WHERE City Recital Hall

• WHEN July 15, 2023