Chopin's Four Ballades

[zamyrabyrd]

Chopin's music, in particular his Ballades, have never stopped being an enigma for me in many years of piano study and teaching. The introductions to the 1st and 4th that set up expectations for different keys, the ambiguous tonality of the 2nd are only a few of the problems that I personally spent many hours breaking my head and fingers over.  There's really not a lot of melodic material in all of them, not like Schubert for instance, and they undergo in general key changes that heighten the interest rather than subject transformation as in Liszt or variations in the style of Beethoven. Nevertheless in an uncanny way, they WORK and are a staple of piano literature.

It was interesting, therefore, to hear Rubinstein's comments in a masterclass on the 1st Ballade after a lifetime of association with Chopin's music. His own playing was a revelation of simplicity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBmdNm3uhc&feature=g-vrec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsIBf19JlIc&NR=1&feature=endscreen

I tend towards Horowitz' interpretations of Chopin although I like Askenazy as well.

ZB

[Staxxx]

It is a pleasure to join this forum. I wanted to recommend a couple of unusual recording that are wonderful too - one historic and one new.....the historic one by Witold Malcuzynski and the new one by Jean Muller (although I am not a fan of the recorded piano sound). His codas are breathtakingly powerful.