I am grateful to Janos Gereben for pointing to the Harry Eyres piece
about Chopin.  Eyres summed up as well as anyone the reasons why I love
Chopin.  Yet for all Chopin's uniqueness and range of emotion, he never,
in my opinion, reveals himself.  It is as though he were performing
behind a screen.  Think of other composers.  Liszt, for example, we know
almost too well through his work.  Beethoven is always present in person.
Haydn seems as real as anybody you could ever know.  And with Mahler,
we feel an intimate bond and know almost too much.  You can read about
Chopin in dozens of books, but the music itself, glorious and incomparable,
tells us little about the man.  It does, however, have the ability to
tell us much about ourselves, and that, more than anything else, explains
its immortality.

Thinks: Must spend a week listening to Chopin.  It's been a while. 
Better yet, get out the scores and play some of it, first making sure
that everybody is out of the house.

David Lamb in Seattle

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