Chopin Salon @ Home: Edward Auer
Until we can see you again at our live events, we are pleased to present the Chopin Salons @ Home. We sincerely hope that all of our members and subscribers are keeping safe and healthy, and we invite you to enjoy these specially curated programs online, at home, and at your convenience. [HINT: when watching the videos, click on “settings” and under “Quality” select the highest option.]
It is hard to believe that it has been more than 6 months since the 10th National Chopin Piano Competition was successfully concluded on March 1, 2020. With live music essentially on hold since then, we now look back on the Miami Competition as if it were a miracle. Contributing to the Competition’s success was the wisdom, experience and guidance of the 9 esteemed jurors. Although he is certainly no stranger to serving on prestigious juries (International Chopin Competition in Warsaw and Tchaikovsky International Competition, to name a few), this was the first time that the U.S. Competition had the honor of welcoming Edward Auer to the jury. It was great to have him with us Miami and now we are happy to take you on a walk with Edward Auer as we learn more about this incredibly respected artist and Chopin specialist.
Paving the Way for American Pianists
In 1965, Edward Auer became the first American to reach the finals at the International Chopin Piano Competition - the 7th Competition since its inception in 1927. It is interesting to hear Mr. Auer’s impressions of that pivotal point in time: ”When I was a kid I thought Europe was terrific and the US was stupid. When I was eleven years old Queen Elizabeth was crowned. The father of a girl I had a crush on was in charge of televising the Coronation in the U.S. so SHE got to go to ENGLAND. This feeling persisted in me without diminishing too much until 1965 when I finally crossed the Atlantic and went to the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.”
This was the year Martha Argerich claimed the first prize and the Warsaw Competition had become a real proving ground for top tier young artists. “The Competition was, of course, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me,” said Auer. “I had been preparing for it for 11 months, and I was ready. The newness (for me) of Europe, with all the different languages and accents and history, was a big part of it. The Filharmonia had been sold out for weeks before the competition. Many of the seats were occupied by two persons! The electricity in the air was like a palpable force. All of us participants were mobbed every time we went out of the hotel into the street. Martha Argerich was already rather famous in Europe, and I became great friends with her and a number of other contestants.”
Let’s take a trip back in time - to the 1965 Competition! Thanks to the incredible archives of Poland’s Fryderyk Chopin Institute, we can close our eyes and listen to Mr. Auer’s 2nd round performance while imagining sitting in the packed Philharmonic Hall:
And from the Prize Winners Concert in March of 1965, here is Mr. Auer’s performance of Chopin’s ‘cantabile’ Prelude in A-flat Major of which Mendelssohn wrote, “I love it! I cannot tell you how much or why; except perhaps that it is something which I could never at all have written.”
From Warsaw to Miami
“I did do well in the [Warsaw] Competition, and was invited for a number of concerts in Poland during the next two months. This was another new exciting thing—I was being treated as a grown-up concert performer, and even paid (though unbelievably little!). Altogether, though I later had prizes in four more international competitions, the atmosphere in the Chopin was the warmest, friendliest, most delightful and most unforgettable. Now, so many decades later, adjudicating at the Miami Chopin Competition, I was more than a little reminded of the amazing atmosphere of Warsaw in 1965. These contestants too seemed to be really excited and ready to experience the audience enthusiasm and the electricity of playing the greatest music in a competitive event. At that age we make friends easily; is there anything more wonderful than to hear another competitor who plays really beautifully and who in turn admires us?”
Words of Wisdom for the Next Generation
Edward Auer is on the piano faculty of Indiana University and is imparting his passion for classical piano repertoire to many eager students. “If we look at the great masters of the past and we try to understand what we love about their art, I’m afraid it will often strike us that our diligent practicing seems not to be aimed at achieving what they achieved,” says Auer. “We spend so much energy trying to attain technical perfection, but when we listen to our ‘elders and betters’ it is usually not the most perfect and faultless performances that we gravitate toward, rather to those players who seem to enter the soul of the music that we return to over and over—the ones who seem to know what the music is saying, and know how to be a mouthpiece for it. —So my advice to aspiring young performers is to keep that as your goal, and always try to get to the real insides of the music—and after all, what good is music otherwise?”
What good, indeed! Let’s finish with a lovely recital from 2015 - a full 50 years beyond Edward Auer’s Competition days in Warsaw - and enjoy truly getting “inside” Chopin’s music:
Thoughts for Today and a Fun Fact
“It always seems that the classical music business is on its last legs, and yet somehow it always manages to survive, and sometimes flourish. And if we want to continue to be able to hear and give concerts, we need to find ways to help support our art! This is not easy, and the only real suggestion I have is that we must all create opportunities to make music, especially on the local (or even “micro!”) level! — house concerts (perhaps this will gradually become more feasible in the coming months) and continuing to make recordings.”
“I have always been cripplingly absent-minded. So as I saw my ‘career’ begin to take its first baby steps, I was constantly leaving my home for a concert or two without my good shoes, without my music, without my concert shirt, etc. One time I didn’t discover until just about an hour before the concert that I had left my white bow tie at home—thinking a bit, I began to see that I might be able to make a reasonable facsimile of a white bow tie! I took some toilet paper, fashioned it into the right shape, put a safety pin through the middle part, a rubber band through the safety pin, and slipped the whole business over my head!! It looked perfect, even from up close—nobody ever knew! I was so proud of it that I kept it, and when a few years later I was asked to contribute something to a raffle for some musical organization, I sent it to them!”
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Chopin Foundation programs are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; and the City of Coral Gables. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; Funding Arts Broward; the Miami Salon Group; and scores of generous donors.