Extreme popularity and inflationary treatment go hand in hand. Hardly any piano piece beyond "Träumerei", "Frühlingsrauschen" and "Für Elise" has a reception history comparable to that of Chopin's "Minute Waltz"; it ranges from the macabre-grotesque to the popular-sentimental to the realms of the highest artistry. The radius of transcriptions and paraphrases of the little work ranges from stylish adaptations to highly amusing depths of curious instrumentation. In addition to this genre, there are, of course, a number of piano paraphrases of the work by master composers, which - having grown out of the pianistic arsenal of the Liszt (not Chopin!) school - elude any naïve "Let's play it!" approach due to their artistic obstacles to realisation on the keyboard instrument and are located only in a lofty sphere of pianistic equilibristics.

Knut Franke

The well-known music editor Knut Franke encouraged Bertold Hummel to contribute a composition in the tonal language of the 20th century on the subject of "Chopin's Minute Waltz as a foil". A juxtaposition of the Tarantella on a tone sequence from Chopin's Minute Waltz with the works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, Raphael Jossefy, Max Reger, Leopold Godowsky, Jeannot Heinen, Sam Raphling or with the original (Chopin's op.64,1) could be an attractive focus of the programme.