I can’t remember how old I was when I first heard the name of Frédéric Chopin. Six, maybe seven. He is one of the most emblematic figures for people of Polish heritage worldwide (not to mention one of the best classical composers of all time). When I began taking piano lessons in my early teens, I yearned to learn his music and was thrilled when I managed to (rather crudely) play one of his preludes. The story of his life, with all its heartbreak and loss, resonates deeply with me, as does his fragmented sense of home, split between the Poland he left behind as part of the Great Emigration and the France where he developed his career (though he always considered himself Polish). Indeed, Chopin’s passionate yearning for home can be heard in the melodies of so many of his works, from the Scherzo No. 1 to the Revolutionary Etude – magnificent pieces that continue to resonate with music lovers across the globe.
Last night, in my current hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, I had the privilege of hearing a young concert pianist for whom Chopin has been a lifelong companion. Born in 1976 in Michigan to Korean immigrants, Alpin Hong showed musical talent in early childhood and was winning international competitions by the age of ten. As a member of the Korean diaspora, dwelling between two worlds, he felt a connection to Chopin’s binational identity. This connection grew even stronger when his parents were tragically killed in an accident, and he and his brother were sent to Los Angeles to be raised by their extended family. After a few years away from the piano (he initially entered UCLA as a pre-med major but ended up spending most of his time with a skateboard and spray paint), he returned to the piano and to his first musical love, Chopin, whose work won him entrance into Juilliard and the beginning of an amazing career.
Tonight’s show, entitled “Chasing Chopin” and produced by the Flying Carpet Theatre Company, combines musical performance, storytelling, and stand-up comedy to lead his audience from hilarity to pathos and back again. He speaks of his childhood adoration of video games and his first experience of the thrill of performance, when as a small child he demolished his brother in a public taekwando exhibition. He tells of his parents’ determination to support his musical career – driving him three hours to Chicago each Sunday so he could study with a world-class teacher, buying him a $20,000 Yamaha piano at age eight (which he still has and plays to this day), and leaving treats around the piano to encourage his practicing. He speaks of his relationship with his brother – playfully antagonistic in early childhood, then deeply close after the sudden death of their parents. He tells of the rough transition to life in LA, where, for the first time, he suffered bullying from students and racial stereotyping from teachers. All of these experiences have shaped him into the musician and educator he is today; his work has been dubbed by the Ocala Star Banner as “classical for the iGeneration.”
I’m not sure if Hong (who has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the White House to tiny towns throughout the Midwest) is planning a Western New York concert any time soon, but I certainly he hope he does (and if he has already been there without my knowledge, I hope he comes back). Hong’s ingenious combination of music and storytelling reveals just how timely Chopin’s music is. In this fluid, global age where it seems that everyone has multiple identities, Chopin’s rich, transnational oeuvre – which drew on Polish folk melodies, Italian tarantellas and much more – is just as powerful now as when it was written. And, I daresay that at a moment when the issue of immigration has stirred up so much tension in the US, it behooves members of the Polish diaspora – ourselves descendants of migrants – to remember that our most celebrated composer was himself a kind of refugee. Though he left Poland voluntarily, the political oppression that occurred under the nineteenth century Partitions of Poland made it impossible for him to return. For this reasons, historians identify Chopin as part of the Great Emigration, a wave of 6,000 migrants fleeing oppression in their homeland and fighting to maintain their cultural identity from abroad. It is fitting that, though Chopin’s body was buried in Paris, his heart was returned to Warsaw. Chopin is truly a man for our time, and Alpin Hong’s impassioned performance made the transnational nature of his work come alive in a completely new way.
