[Sound effect]

 

Terrance McKnight: This is the Open Ears Project

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Chopin’s Ballade No. 1]

 

JENNIFER EGAN: I feel that there's something sort of chemical about it that helped us to let go of the thing we've been thinking about or focusing on and just transports us mentally.

 

It's serving as an almost mnemonic device.

 

But I think there's actually something deeper about it.

 

What is it that makes us listen to a particular piece of music and like it? And that feeling of liking it is sub verbal. It's kind of interacting with our brains in ways that get around language and imagery, the two things that really saturate most of our lives.

 

My name is Jennifer Egan and I'm a fiction writer and a journalist. The piece I've chosen is Chopin's ballade Number one.

 

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I've always loved Chopin. My mother used to play the piano and I was aware of his work and actually had a series of records that I listened to as a kid that included his pieces and also a little bit of a dramatization of his life.

 

And I think I had a little bit of a crush on him, um, he seemed to be eternally unwell in a sort of romantic artistic way. So I've always been sort of into him.

 

It's in a way, a very narrative piece, as opposed to say, Chopin's nocturnes or etudes, it really moves through a lot of different moods and tones.

 

It's actually pretty dramatic and wild as it goes on. And I love that surprise.

 

I think it is a piece that seems to be telling a story. It feels like it's music as language in a way you could say it's sort of like a journey or a conversation, but it feels very exploratory also.

 

Storytelling began as an oral tradition. And I feel more aware than ever of how important the music of the language is.

 

And boy, when you're listening on audio and the writer hasn't attended to that, that missing dimension actually can be quite grating to feel that there's not an awareness of the sounds that the language is making.

 

I think there's the rhythm and the music of language that should be working in any piece of fiction or any sort of narrative.

 

But ideally, there's also just the rhythm of pacing and the rhythm of the way the piece moves through time that also should be working in order for something to be really strong.

 

And I think when I say this piece sounds narrative, it's that kind of narrative that I'm talking about.

 

Ok, here's the big moment.

 

It kind of reminds me of falling down stairs, not in a damaged way, but it's sort of like it's all just sort of flying out in that moment.

 

I'm just loving this all over again listening to it because you would not expect this kind of brisk pace from that, from the very slow, quiet, pretty start.

 

There's such a chemistry to all this, You know, what each of us wants from narrative is very specific to us. Personally I like narratives that are full of all that stuff, that are really unpredictable. But the price I and my readers have to pay for that is a lot of loose ends.

 

You can't tie everything up with a ribbon and have this kind of feeling that I'm looking for. Maybe Chopin can. I'm kind of curious to see how he does it here even though I kind of know every note and yet it feels so surprising to hear it.

 

That's also greatness when knowing what's coming, actually enriches the experience.

 

So there we are back to the beginning, ugh! 

 

I mean, this is exactly what I'm trying to do when I write fiction, I don't think I've ever gotten there.

 

But to be doing so many different things at once. To be modulating rhythm and tone in such a way that surprises seem to fly out of nowhere and yet what came before them is what led to them and what produced them.

 

I mean, this is, this is a great book: surprise, inevitability, variability, multiple fronts of action.

 

You have to have all that stuff. That's what narrative is.

 

It's just, it's such a masterpiece.

 

TERRANCE MCKNIGHT: That was author Jennifer Egan, guiding us through Chopin’s Ballade Number One in G Minor. Stay with us. We’ve got the full piece for you right after this break. 

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Chopin’s Ballade No. 1]

 

TERRANCE MCKNIGHT: This is The Open Ears Project. 

 

Next week… It’s Garth Greenwell on the music of Benjamin Britten.

 

GARTH GREENWELL: I became obsessed with his music and I became obsessed with his life and the fact that he was gay and the fact that in a world that was bitterly repressive in which homosexuality was punished by incarceration, or worse, he created a space in the world in which he could publicly celebrate his lifelong love for the tenor Peter Pears. 

 

Listening to the recordings between him and Peter Pears was for me really… My first experience of the possibility of queer love.

 

TERRANCE MCKNIGHT: The Open Ears Project was conceived and created by Clemency Burton-Hill. I’m Terrance McKnight. I’m so pleased to present season two of this podcast to you. 

 

If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you’ve got a story about a piece of classical music, we want to know. Email us at OpenEars@WQXR.org. 

 

You can also head to our website, WQXR.org, to check out our other podcasts about classical music and playlists for this and past seasons.

 

Season two of The Open Ears Project was produced by Clemency Burton-Hill and Rosa Gollan. Our technical director is Sapir Rosenblatt, and our project manager is Natalia Ramirez. Elizabeth Nonemaker is the executive producer of podcasts at WQXR, and Ed Yim is our chief content officer. 

 

I’m Terrance McKnight. Thanks for listening.