In the midcult cinematic misstep “Impromptu,” the writer George Sand (vigorously played by Judy Davis) slinks beneath a piano which is being played by a sickly Frederic Chopin (a strangely effective Hugh Grant) in order to eavesdrop on the Act of Creation. When he stops playing, she exhorts him to continue, suggesting he was in the “middle of a miracle.” The film itself describes, with greater or lesser clarity (read: reality), a certain bohemian milieu, in which Chopin, the consummate, consumption-ridden composer, featured, along with his great friend Franz Liszt and the now-largely-forgotten poet Alfred de Musset, and, as the title suggests, together they drink deep of great draughts from the wellspring of inspired “creativity,” while love affairs and death loom overhead. Compelling, certainly, especially when Musset accuses Chopin of writing music that is “dusted with sugar.” Obviously history has born out the truth: Musset’s work languishes largely unread while you hold in your hands an excellent example of one of the many pianists who have chosen to devote entire records to Chopin. At the time of the cinematic meeting between Chopin and Sand, in 1837, the piano was comparatively young, having come to prominence less that four decades hence. Beethoven, the first great composer to produce a substantive body of work for the instrument (to understate matters) had died only ten years prior. And while it was his friend Liszt who would eventually turn the pianist into public figure (including angling the instrument to the side so his famous profile was on view for all the ladies), it was Chopin who would make it sing. While one can lament the opera he never wrote (he wanted to, but was unable to find a suitable libretto) or the chamber music he never came to (who cannot but grieve a little for his non-existent string quartet), one cannot lament his compositional output. It ranges from the rigorous to the wistful, from thew brooding to the manic, impeccable and impeccably unhinged. We cannot know but anecdotally if his improvisations were the miracles the movie suggests, but we can look at his work and see the work, the sheer unadulterated technique involved, the exacting meticulousness it took and takes to make music like this sound so effortless and inspired. For all this, Chopin might well have turned out to be a niche composer, like Carl Czerny, known only to pianists, the equivalent of David Popper who is bread and butter to cellists but has little play beyond. And yet, the world knows and adores Chopin, for the simple reason that yes, of course, his music runs to gorgeous and sublime, but it is his technical prowess, second to none, that makes him continue to speak loudly to generations. And while all of his compositional rigor is essentially subterranean (the converse of Bach, who wore his daemonic capacities on his proverbial sleeve: his pieces are the technique, in so many cases, and dazzling as such): it is there—the capacity to spin a small musical nugget into a long piece, the counterpoint (not something for which he is primarily known and yet he is second only to Bach in the pantheon), the dazzling capacity with the inner voices, the rigorous sense of craft—but it is second to his sense of pacing, of elegance, of sheer, unalloyed beauty. Much like his long-standing paramour George Sand (who we have to thank for simply keeping Chopin alive), the gorgeous surface of the work belies and almost negates the rigor—it is there, you just have to know where to look. Among the hardest things to pull off is to make an étude—which is French for “study” and meant to help an instrumentalist solve a particular technical challenge—sexy. And yet listen to the lone Étude on this disc, the ninth from the Op. 10 set, and strain to hear the “problem” that is being addressed here: it is not easy to do, which is the magic of these pieces in the hands of this composer (and let’s not forget the other set of hands involved here, pianist Melissa Marse, who has a touch that is both potent and elegant). The study portion—in this case, about playing wide-spread figures—is insider’s knowledge. Chopin based the entire piece on the technical challenge, but you have to listen deep: mostly we just hear the gorgeous piece. And his way with studies is only comparable to his way with what can only be called the “formless forms,” like Nocturne or Prelude which, unlike sonatas or fugues or even études, dictate only mood; to say nothing of the Ecossaises or the Berceuse, which are forms only insomuch as they are redolent of music for dancing, the former riotous and in double meter, a contradance, the latter lilting and in triple meter, a lullaby. And yet when working in these more abstract forms, Chopin shimmers, offers his own take, makes them effectively his. There’s a voice, there’s a technique, and there’s his abiding sense of vigorous musical curiosity. He never goes beyond his own instrument because he need not: staying put has been a benefit to us all. The fact that Chopin excelled at a form called “Impromptu” (which occasioned the name of the above-mentioned film), and the fact that it was Chopin’s skill as an improviser (a keen Hollywood trope because the genre of film seems allergic to the dullness that is composition, opting instead to view the composer as a muse-besotted creature of rare gifts indeed) which so entranced Georges Sand and consequently posterity is something of a game of opposites. No, the music you hear, the disc you hold, is full of dedicated and serious compositions so flawlessly rendered that they seem inevitable—in other words, like any virtuoso, Chopin, now and for eternity, makes it look easy. DANIEL FELSENFELD