Chopin Week: the Ballades

By Ivan Hewett Published: 3:42PM GMT twenty-four Feb 2010

A balladeer is someone who tells a story in song, so youd design something called a ballade to be something similar to a story in notes. But Chopin left no idea about what stories had in mind - so naturally, evidence has raged ever given as to what the buried narratives in these 4 smashing pieces competence be.

Because each of them sweeps to a eminent or even comfortless end ,the enticement is to couple them to Polands comfortless history. During Chopins lifetime they were thought to be desirous by the poems of the jingoist producer Adam Mickiewicz, generally the second Ballade. Theres a idea here of rural ignorance vigourously despoiled, that suggests a probable couple with a poem describing invading Russian soldiers.

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But most people contend this is next to the point, and we should provide the Ballades as pristine music. Chopin would have agreed. He had a really precisionist source of music, and hated the nauseating bent to pin titles to pieces. In any case, small records cant discuss it a story. They can paint a mood, but not what caused it, or either the eventuality happened only right away or prolonged ago.

And nonetheless the startling thing is how close these pieces come to you do the impossible. Take that second Ballade. That poetic rocking suit (shared with all the Ballades, by the way), and the dangling harmonic suit - dont they say, "Once on a time, prolonged ago?" And the mad gesticulate that breaks in - doesnt that thrust us uncontrolled in to a little comfortless scene, function prior to the eyes (those Russian soldiers, perhaps)?

I feel the sceptics and the romantics are both right. The forms have a absolute low-pitched logic, but the contrasts inside of them are so sharp, and the fortitude behind so long, that the tough not to feel the contingent windstorm finale as a comfortless denouement.

Artur Rubinsteins 1959 version is smashing for the implausible accumulation - each Ballade lives in the own meridian of feeling. Perahia has an insinuate proceed that I find moving, though a little might find it not in in fire. Pollinis recording is opposite again, unconditional up the digressions in a inhuman leading sweep.

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Maurizio Pollini, DG 459 683-2, �9.99

Murray Perahia, Sony SK 64399, �13.99

Artur Rubinstein, RCA SACD (ADD) 82876 61396-2 �10.99

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