He was a narcissistic, anti-Semitic fop who betrayed his country and hated his fellow man. The charges levelled against Chopin are as diverse as they are odious.Everyone has their own idea of Chopin, and it's often wide of the mark. His commodification by advertisers and the serial murder of a few unfortunate pieces by "smooth classics" programmers means his real oeuvre is now almost terra incognita. His character, meanwhile, has been travestied in a thousand ways. Time was when he was written off as effeminate – "one naturally thinks of him with a skirt on" was the American composer Charles Ives' idiotically macho jibe – and he's now customarily depicted either as a heroic Polish patriot or hypersensitive hothouse plant. While neither image fits the facts, a newer one – first proposed by the pianist Andras Schiff – is currently being tried for size: it has superficial plausibility, but on closer scrutiny proves as blinkered and childish as the others.
After researching Chopin in depth for a biographical film, Schiff – who plays his music with rare sensitivity – condemned him as an anti-Semite, a self-invented aristocrat, a social snob, a dandy who hated contact with the rest of the human race, and a man totally without loyalty to his fellow Polish exiles. "A very strange person, very hard to like," Schiff concluded with haughty distaste. In other words, a great composer, but a rotten human being.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/a-troubled-genius-the-truth-about-chopin-1848372.html
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