Chopin: Trois nouvelle études, no. 1 (1839).

An unpublished transcription by Chopin’s friend and collaborator Auguste Franchomme.

Neil Heyde, cello and Roy Howat, piano

This performance was given as part of a presentation at the Academy hosted by my friend and colleague Peter Sheppard Skaerved exploring the Stradivari violin played by François-Antoine Habeneck (sitting on the table). I looked at a small set of relationships between players, composers and makers in 19th-century Paris and played three of cellist Auguste Franchomme’s transcriptions of Chopin piano etudes. This may well be the first modern performance of this one, which only exists in manuscript and like many of the others was not even ‘finished’ for publication with fingerings and bowing.

The cello I am playing is an analogue of the ‘Duport’ Stradivari that Franchomme played, made by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in 1840. Vuillaume knew Franchomme well and persuaded him to buy the ‘Duport’. During this period Chopin and Franchomme were writing as well as playing in partnership and I like the idea that Franchomme felt that Chopin’s melodies were an ‘ideal’ to be realised on the cello.