Ballades Nos. 1–4

According to Robert Schumann, to whom the Ballade No.2 in F major is dedicated, both it and its predecessor in G minor were “inspired by poems of Mickiewicz.” That, he clearly states, is what Chopin told him when the Polish composer played it (or part of it) in his presence in Leipzig in 1836. So, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we can safely accept that the keyboard ballade has its origins in a form of narrative poetry. The internal evidence of the four Ballades, which combine a narrative element with sonata form and make a special feature of the storyteller, surely confirms as much. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that the actual narrative content of Adam Mickiewicz’s Ballady i romanse relates in any way to the events in Chopin’s music.

Ballade No.1 in G minor Op.23 (c1835)

The First Ballade begins with a short harp-like prelude which establishes the bardic personality destined to reappear in the other Ballades. The narrator introduces the first thematic character, the melancholy but excitable first subject, in G minor. The second subject is happier and more relaxed in E flat major. Goaded by the first theme, however, the second is compelled to change its mood during the course of the development, achieving full-scale eloquence in A major and, at the end of a scherzando episode based on the narrator’s theme, urgently asserting itself in E flat again. The first subject is recapitulated in the tonic but without the second subject: all conventional expectations are swept away in a presto con fuoco coda. The narrator adds a dramatically expressive epilogue, where funereal allusions in G minor to a characteristic rhythmic feature of the second subject confirm the unhappy ending.

Ballade No.2 in F major Op.38 (1839)

When Schumann heard Chopin play the First Ballade in 1836 he declared it “the best of all his works.” Chopin agreed with him. In 1839, when he had finished the Second Ballade in F major, he dedicated the new work to his German colleague. It quickly became a favourite too. Chopin performed it frequently but never, apparently, in its entirety. He is said to have played only the first part, in an extended version. Obviously, this is the most attractive part, and it is particularly inspired in the way its gentle pastoral theme grows so naturally out of the repeated harp notes in the first few bars. The parts Chopin did not play are the two stormy presto con fuoco episodes, with the narrator’s voice from the First Ballade rising in an impassioned cry in the left hand. The idyll is definitively drowned by the second episode, which leads not into F major again but to an agitato coda ending in a desolate A minor

Ballade No.3 in A flat major Op.47 (1841)

The Third Ballade was completed two years after the second and is already more subtle in construction than the its predecessors. It is impossible to say for certain whether the first section, which is so elusive and so changeable in colour, is introduction or exposition. The opening bars return, are converted into a low echo of the narrator’s theme from the First Ballade and pause on a chord of A flat major. A delightful new theme enters, preceded by an outline of its lilting rhythm in the right hand. This could be a second subject or it could easily be the first main theme. Whatever it is, it is closely related to the earlier material. It dominates the piece from this point on in an apparently spontaneous series of variations, passing dramatically through C sharp minor and into a climax of keyboard brilliance and acoustic magnitude.

Ballade No.4 in F minor Op.52 (1842-3)

The ballade conventions - the 6/8 metre, the narrative style, the bardic prelude - are retained in the fourth and last in the set, written in 1842. The F minor Ballade is, however, even more liberated in form than the A flat major and is on a larger scale. One of the greatest of all Chopin’s works, it is a structural masterpiece and, like all the best examples of story-telling, never predictable. The main theme, introduced after the short prelude with the characteristic repeated notes, sounds like a fragile stray from one of the nocturnes. Although it at first gives no hint of the epic trials it is about to withstand, it proves to be an adaptable melody, capable of carrying a weight of passionate expression, before it is relieved by the entry of a happier, less complicated theme in B flat major. The burden of the main climax is borne by this more robust second subject, now in D flat major. But the brilliant coda, beginning after the slow and quiet chords which bring the music temporarily to rest on C major, is yet another transformation of the mercurial main theme.