Poland has the blessing of a succession of great composers. This year the country is celebrating the centenary of Witold Lutoslawski, and that has helped revive the interest in the Polish mid-century avant-garde, the likes of Szymanowski, Penderecki and their contemporaries with a musical penchant for mystifying dissonance. But among Poland's finest, one name from the 19th century towers above all: Fryderyk Chopin.
The life and work of Chopin are presented with media other than just text and pictures.
Chopin, also avant-garde in his day, is much more than a composer. One of the best-known Poles, the Romantic pianist is a cultural icon that embodies the country's deep, rich heritage that also represents a classic European treasure. He's not only a symbol _ though he was once on a banknote _ but also a living pride of the country that saw so many heartbreaks, partitions, and one catastrophic devastation.
When the Nazis invaded Warsaw in 1939, the national radio played Chopin to tell the world that Poland was still breathing. Of course, his face now decorates souvenir mugs and key chains, and his name has inevitably become part of the tourism machine, but Poland has done a fine job of making sure that visitors, or at least visitors who care, can learn about Chopin's life and work in-depth so that he exists as a man and not just as a logo.
The biggest contribution to this is the Chopin Museum in Warsaw. Housed in the handsome Ostrogski Palace which dates back to the time of the composer, the museum has been one of the prime stops for visitors to Poland since its opening in 2010, the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth. What's startling is that the memory of this Romantic figure is preserved and celebrated here in innovative, 21st-century quasi-modernism: the four levels of the museum dispense with chronology, and instead present its wealth of information with multi-dimensional exhibits, interactive displays, sensory invitations, children's games, experimental soundscapes, and even a dash of video art. There are pianos and manuscripts and Chopin's notation sheets, there are sound booths and an audio library where you can hear all the Nocturne and Mazurka to last a lifetime _ but the core idea of the museum is to wrap us in a swirl of artistic and historical contexts of Chopin's life instead of "telling us" about him. You can easily spend half a day or more here. A key card is presented to each visitor, and it's used to activate a number of interactive exhibits. From the start, a staff member advises that it doesn't matter where to start your wandering _ you can begin on the first floor or the top one _ because the navigation of the exhibit has been designed with a free-flow philosophy that allows a great deal of individual experience. It's as if the museum presents us with a musical score and we, as pianists, are free to interpret it.
The Chopin Museum in Warsaw is set in a building from the early 19th century.
Chopin was born in 1810 and left Poland for Paris when he was 20. A man of poor health all his life, he died in Paris when he was 39. In a broad sense, his lifespan frames the narrative of the exhibition, though in a hyperlink-style branching off, the museum offers sidebar details and contexts that deepen our understanding of the composer's life and music, as well as of the two cities he lived in. For instance, the history of the venues where Chopin once performed _ he preferred salon-style small gatherings in aristocratic mansions _ are shown in their successive status throughout the past 200 years. Chopin left Poland in 1830, the year of the Polish uprising against the Russian Empire, and the reason for his departure is because he was seen as part of the cultural intelligentsia who must preserve Polish tradition abroad should the nation be crushed; at the museum, the full story, including slide shows, text and video of the 1830 uprising, is featured prominently.
Once in Paris, Chopin became involved in one of the most scandalously romantic love stories with George Sand, the controversial novelist known for her writing as well as her tendency to walk around Paris in men's clothing. The Chopin Museum sets aside one room to tell us about all the women in the composer's life _ from his patrons to students to lovers _ and Sand, so colourful even by today's standards, is the highlight. We even get to use the interactive card to scroll through the history of her past lovers on a screen. Sand was the woman Chopin lived with when he passed away.
Perhaps the biggest achievement of the museum is to avoid becoming a mausoleum of past glory and cobwebbed nostalgia. In the room dedicated to Chopin's death, text reads "Chopin is no more" above the mask used to cover his face at his funeral. But that feeling of loss has been subverted by the curious installation art placed in the museum. It consists of a microphone hung from the ceiling that emits an electronic-sounding audio simulation of someone speaking and coughing: it's Chopin and his poor respiratory system, re-imagined for those who've never heard him.
Chopin is no more? Apparently, that's not entirely true.
The interactive features of the museum include games, movies and installations.
