It seems as though all the star performers I’ve heard end up trying to make it as hard as the others by plowing through it with virtuosic flare, and thus trivializing it. The ballades are all difficult, but it’s the easiest of them (sort of like the shortest Himalaya). The world we classical performers live in gives us very little room not to play big show pieces, or make everything we play into one.Ĭhopin’s third ballade suffers particularly from this problem. But that’s exactly what the pianists we usually hear are striving to do: impress the contest judges, the critics, the public. Although he wrote some very difficult and impressive stuff, the ultimate effect of his music, I feel, should never really be to impress. In everything Chopin writes, no matter how complex and virtuosic, that powerful simplicity is there at the core. The third of Chopin’s four Ballades for the piano has been called “probably the only 19th century ballade with a happy ending (as well as being the only ballade of Chopin’s that ends on a major chord).”īut there’s quite a journey it takes before that happy resolution, both in the literary allusion to a tragic short story by Adam Mickiewicz, and in the technical challenge outlined by pianist Paul Cantrell in his excellent blog and podcast In The Hands: Ashton Jonson, Recordings | Leave a Comment » Posted in Arthur Greene, Etudes, Quotes, Recordings | Tagged Arthur Greene, Etudes, G.C. Ashton Jonson, author of the 1905 tome A Handbook to Chopin’s Works: (For the Use of Concert-Goers, Pianists, and Pianola Players):Ĭlick on the piano to hear Chopin Project Artistic Director Arthur Greene perform Chopin’s unique Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. So, for the final word, let’s transport you back to G.C. Oh, and just to mess you up a little further, the left and right hand are playing quite independent musical lines that need to coincide at key moments. And the technique here is an exquisitely difficult phrasing and balance question – making the left hand carry the melody without being overpowered by the right - when the natural tendency is to go the other way. It’s supposed to help you with perfecting you piano technique. Others have called it “A Duet between a He and a She.” Or perhaps you prefer “Morbidly Elegaic?” Ballade-like? A Missing Nocturne?Īnother school of thought says plainly: It’s an Etude. Sometimes it’s called the “ ‘cello Etude,” due to the fact that the prominent melody is in the left hand, approximating the range of a cello. And one that has generated a considerable amount of ink over the decades. 25 Etudes lies this unique and memorable piece that is unlike any other Chopin creation.
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