Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op.60

A masterful product of Chopin’s late years, the Barcarolle cost the composer enormous trouble. It was a matter not only of his increasingly problematic relationship with George Sand and her children, which made life at her home in Nohant so uncomfortable for him, but also of a severely self-critical attitude to his work, which made it difficult for him to get anything finished. But, of course, when he did complete the Barcarolle - at Nohant in the summer of 1846, having started it there twelve months earlier - it seemed no less spontaneous than anything else he had written during the last five or six years.

Like the Berceuse, completed at Nohant just two years earlier, the Barcarolle takes a popular convention as its starting point. In this case it is the Venetian gondola song, all the traditional attributes of which, after the short introduction, are there - the 12/8 metre, the gentle rocking accompani­ment, the melody sung in seductive thirds and sixths. But this is only the beginning of a construction which far transcends its origins. Basically, it is a ternary shape with a quicker middle section and, at the heart of that, a still quicker episode with a new theme in A major. That central theme both inspires the fortissimo climax of the last section, when it reappears in F sharp major, and underlies the pianissimo decorations in the tranquil last bars.

Already far gone in his final illness by the time he gave the first performance of the Barcarolle in 1847 - at what was to be his last concert in Paris - and too weak to achieve a fortissimo, Chopin reduced the climax to a pianissimo. It must have had a peculiarly eerie effect.

Another masterful product of Chopin’s late years - it was written two years after the Berceuse - the Barcarolle cost the composer enormous trouble. It was a matter not only of his increasingly problematic relationship with George Sand and her children, which made life at Nohant so uncomfortable for him, but also of a severely self-critical attitude to his work, which made it difficult for him to get anything finished. But, of course, when he did complete the Barcarolle - at Nohant in the summer of 1846, having started it there twelve months earlier - it seemed no less spontaneous than anything else he had written during the last five or six years.

Like the Berceuse, the Barcarolle takes a popular convention as its starting point. In this case it is the Venetian gondola song, all the traditional attributes of which, after the short introduction, are there - the 12/8 metre, the gentle rocking accompani­ment, the melody sung in seductive thirds and sixths. But this is only the beginning of a construction which far transcends its origins. Basically, it is a ternary shape with a quicker middle section and, at the heart of that, a still quicker episode with a new theme in A major. That central theme both inspires the fortissimo climax of the last section, when it reappears in F sharp major, and underlies the pianissimo decorations in the tranquil last bars.

Already far gone in his final illness by the time he gave the first performance of the Barcarolle in 1847 - at what was to be his last concert in Paris - Chopin was too weak to achieve a fortissimo and chose to reduce the climax to a pianissimo. It must have had a peculiarly eerie effect.