A voice for a concert : the "Chopin without a piano" project

Przedruk. Pierwotna wersja tekstu ukazała się pod tym samym tytułem w czasopiśmie "Ruch Literacki" 2023 nr 6, s. 965-975

This article presents a contextual analysis of "Chopin without a piano", an ambitious intermedia performance scripted and produced in 2013 by Michał Zadara and Barbara Wysocka in collaboration with the conductor Jacek Kaspszyk. Here it is discussed within the framework of some selected legacy practices and literalizations of Chopin’s music, chief among them the arrangement conventions (including Peter Szendy’s idea of arrangement as a projection of a personal, idiosyncratic musical history). What makes the "Chopin without a piano" project unique is the substitution of the actual piano parts with the spoken word, i.e. a string of descriptions, emotional reactions and expert comments carefully orchestrated to bring out the full range of the phonic, performative and semantic potential of the human voice. In its essence it is an interesting attempt to roll out an amplitude of voices enacting an intermedia version and equivalent of the musical narrative.