Godoy in Poland. Warsaw

Dear Fran,

Godoy is come back, this time from Poland, and this is his experience.

<<Saturday, 29^th  September

I leave Seville after eight o'clock at night because the plain is late. We arrived at the Modlin airport and the route from the stairs to the terminal is very long, not because of the distance but because of the cold. From 35º to 13º in just over three and a half hours. I come in shirt sleeves and I'm shivering along the way. Good thing there is a bus waiting in the parking lots.

When we arrived in Warsaw, I ask the driver on the street of the hotel and he kindly looks for it on his tablet and points me in the direction. At two o'clock in the morning I send a whatsapp to the family: I'm already in the room.>>

Aleja Jerozolimskie

<<Sunday, 30^th September

The avenue through which I am walking is full of panels with plans and photographs of the "new Warsaw".

It's ten o'clock in the morning and I enter the Sanktuarium Matki Katolicki Zbawiciela. There is mass. Old people. It is an almost naked church that has walls painted in light tones and where some golds stand out.

Mary, before going on I will tell you that in the eastern part of Poland where I have been the churches they have two names: kosciol and cerkiew; what I do not know is the difference between one and the other.

According to the plan, if I turn to my left I will arrive at the Lazienki Park and as it is a sunny day, I will go there.

As soon as I enter, I come across the announcement of a concert next to Chopin's monument at twelve o´clock. What a welcome! I get lost in the paths of the gardens making time and a quarter of an hour before noon I sit on one of the benches ready for the audition. Soon these banks are filled with listeners and then people sit where they believe best. Some people take a blanket or a mat to choose a place on the lawn closest to the artist: Piotr Latoszynski.

Chopin Concerts in the Royal Lazienki Park

As at the same time there is a popular race in the vicinity and a batucada is encouraging the runners, we have to wait for the frenetic rhythm of the percussionists to cease. I observe that the elderly people who attend these concerts take their cushions.

This music has brought back memories of my adolescence, when my cousin Rafa gave me a long play of Chopin's polonaises performed at the piano by Gyorgy Cziffra. Nowadays I do not know what was from that record.

Lazienki gardens

Today the day has been dedicated to the musician of Zelazowa Wola.

I enter the Chopin Museum and among the objects exhibited there I stop at some letters, staves, a clock of Angelica Catalani (soprano) from before 1820 ...

In a small room I see a vertical piano, a table and cups of coffee prepared for an intimate concert.

In one of the letters I can read: Best wishes to his father on his name day, 6^th of December 1816.

I also find a surprising work dedicated to the Countess Skarbek, in 1817. Eight years old had when he wrote this polonaise!

Personally I cannot imagine myself playing the piano. I think that to do it I would need two brains, one for the left hand and one for the right one, because I am not able to maintain two different and complementary melodies at the same time.

A cast of Fryderyk Chopin´s left hand.

Chopin´s last piano, made by Ignace Pleyel, 1840s.

Pencil from the composer´s notebook (I can say that I always carry one, but that Chopin's was finer and had the magic of writing musical notes.)

Fryderyk Chopin´s pocket diary for 1834.

It is at this moment that Ewa —an attentive volunteer— gets up from her chair and reveals to me the secret of a piano that could go unnoticed if it were not for this woman's desire to share this confidence. It turns out that inside the box of that piano is hidden, sheltered, the signature of Chopin. This confession has great value for me and I thank Ewa.

The Vistula

Fryderyk Chopin´s passport drafted by French police authorizing his trip to England, 1837.

Fryderyk Chopin´s pocket diary for 1849.

A version of the mask taken immediately following the death of Chopin…>>

     Y. a.

     Mary