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32 CHOPIN_POLONIA
During your studies, who was the teacher who particularly guided you
towards the music of Chopin? Which opuses did you start with? Was
there a special style of performing Chopin at the Conservatoire National
Supérieur in Paris when you were a student there?
In fact I quite quickly grew disillusioned, partly because of the very way the
Conservatoire functioned and the unique place themusic of Chopinoccupied there.
In an institution like the Conservatoire, you have to assimilate a certain number
of traditions that quickly turn out to be ossifying in practice. We didn’t have the
right to play Chopin’s music freely; we had to know everything the interpreters of
the past had done with it, and that considerably reduced the enthusiasm that the
young man I was then felt simply grappling with his music.