Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36

Whatever reason Chopin had for withholding his Impromptu in C sharp minor from publication – it was first published, under the title “Fantaisie-Impromptu,” in an edition by Fontana six years after the composer’s death – he did not forget it. The Impromptu No.1 in A flat major Op.29 has so much in common with it as to qualify almost as another version of the same thing and the Impromptu No.3 in G flat major Op.51 has parallels with both the earlier works. The Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major Op.36 which was written at Nohant in 1839, is far more adventurous than its two predecessors but not entirely different from them even so.

Its first theme, arising in the right hand over a two-part ostinato in the left, is clearly related to the middle sections of both the Fantaisie-Impromptu and the Impromptu in A flat. What is peculiar to this work is that the F sharp major opening section is lyrical rather than agitated and that, after the first theme has been pushed aside by an assertive polonaise-like gesture in C sharp, the middle section takes the form of an aggressive march in D major. The lyrical material duly returns but with so little help from the modulating harmonies at the end of the middle section that it it is forced to make its re-entry in the alien key of F major before it can find its way back into F sharp to present itself in two progressively decorative variants. The polonaise gesture also returns but this time to end the piece decisively in the tonic.

“It might not be any good,” said Chopin to Fontana in October 1839. “I can’t judge it yet. It’s too new…We’ll see in time.”

chopin: impromptu in F sharp op36

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Impromptu in F sharp major, Op.36

Whatever reason Chopin had for withholding his Impromptu in C sharp minor from publication - it was first published, under the title “Fantaisie-Impromptu,” in an edition by Fontana six years after the composer’s death - he did not forget it. The Impromptu No.1 in A flat major, Op.29, has so much in common with it as to qualify almost as another version of the same thing and the Impromptu No.3 in G flat major, Op.51, has parallels with both the earlier works. The Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36, which was written at Nohant in 1839, is far more adventurous than its two predecessors but not entirely different from them even so.

Its first theme, arising in the right hand over a two-part ostinato in the left, is clearly related to the middle sections of both the Fantaisie-Impromptu and the Impromptu in A flat. What is peculiar to this work is that the F sharp major opening section is lyrical rather than agitated and that, after the first theme has been pushed aside by an assertive polonaise-like gesture in C sharp, the middle section takes the form of an aggressive march in D major. The lyrical material duly returns but with so little help from the modulating harmonies at the end of the middle section that it it is forced to make its re-entry in the alien key of F major before it can find its way back into F sharp to present itself in two progressively decorative variants. The polonaise gesture also returns but this time to end the piece decisively in the tonic.

“It might not be any good,” said Chopin to Fontana in October 1839. “I can’t judge it yet. It’s too new…We’ll see in time.”

chopin piano works, recital VI

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36

Whatever reason Chopin had for withholding his Impromptu in C sharp minor from publication - it was first published, under the title “Fantaisie-Impromptu,” in an edition by Fontana six years after the composer’s death - he did not forget it. The Impromptu No.1 in A flat major, Op.29, has so much in common with it as to qualify almost as another version of the same thing, while the Impromptu No.3 in G flat major, Op.51, has parallels with both the earlier works. The Impromptu No.2 in F sharp major, Op.36, which was written at Nohant in 1839, is far more adventurous than its two predecessors but not entirely different from them even so.

Its first theme, arising in the right hand over a two-part ostinato in the left, is clearly related to the middle sections of both the Fantaisie-Impromptu and the Impromptu in A flat. What is peculiar to this work is that the F sharp major opening section is lyrical rather than agitated and that, after the first theme has been pushed aside by an assertive polonaise-like gesture in C sharp, the middle section takes the form of an aggressive march in D major. The lyrical material duly returns but with so little help from the modulating harmonies at the end of the middle section that it is forced to make its re-entry in the alien key of F major before it can find its way back into F sharp to present itself in two progressively decorative variants. The polonaise gesture also returns but this time to end the piece decisively in the tonic.

“It might not be any good,” said Chopin to Fontana in October 1839. “I can’t judge it yet. It’s too new…We’ll see in time.”

12 Etudes, Op.25

No.1 in A flat major

No.2 in F minor

No.3 in F major

No.4 in A minor

No.5 in E minor

No.6 in G sharp minor

No.7 in C sharp minor

No.8 in D flat major

No.9 in G flat major

No.10 in B minor

No.11 in A minor

No.12 in C minor

Chopin apparently did not consider his Etudes to be so very different from the general run of technical studies available at the time. Far from protecting his pupils from the more or less mechanical Gradus ad Parnassum or School of Velocity kind of thing, he put them to work on Clementi, Cramer and Czerny even after he had completed his first set of twelve Etudes, Op.10. In 1839, three years after he had completed this second set, Op.25, he happily supplied three more examples for the frankly pedagogical Méthode des Méthodes of Fétis and Moscheles.

Some of Chopin’s more enlightened contemporaries, on the other hand, were very well aware of the uniquely imaginative quality of his achievement in these works. Liszt, to whom the Op.10 set was dedicated in 1833, definitively declared that “they spring, like all his works, from the nature of his poetic genius.” Schumann, always in search of piano studies which “offer nourishment for both hand and spirit,” said that Chopin’s “are all true poetic images.”

Schumann actually had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of the Op.25 set. “Imagine an Aeolian harp,” he wrote, “with all the scales mingled together by an artist’s hand in all kinds of fantastic decoration, but in such a way that you could always hear a deeper fundamental tone and a softly singing melody.”He was thinking of No.1 in A flat, a study which could be described in technical terms as an exercise in the legato articulation of rapid arpeggios in even semiquavers but with the melody notes made to stand out in the right hand and occasional bass notes in the left. In the same terms, No.2 in F minor is a cleverly calculated study in cross rhythms; according to Schumann, the composer made it sound “like a child singing in its sleep.” If he was less enthusiastic about Etude No.3 in F major - “also beautiful, if less original in character than in figuration” - it must be because he failed to appreciate the wit in Chopin’s treatment of his virtuoso material.

Like No.3 in F, most of the Etudes retain the same figuration throughout. No.4 in A minor, however, which is basically a study in staccato, ingeniously mixes syncopated legato phrases with clipped off-beat chords in the right hand. Occasionally the composer goes so far as to introduce a contrasting middle section, like the lovely E major trio of the miniature scherzo which is No.5 in E minor. In No.6 in G sharp minor the right hand is occupied exclusively with a brilliantly frivolous continuity of parallel thirds. No.7 in C sharp minor, on the other hand, is deeply serious, calling for a left hand of exceptional eloquence and a tactful right. Whereas No.8 in D flat is a sustained exercise in parallel sixths in the right hand, with conflicting phrasing in the left, and whereas No.9 in G flat flutters along in the same “butterfly” figuration from the beginning almost to the end, the fierce double-octaves of No.10 in B minor give way to a lyrical middle section in the relative major, the octaves now radiantly colouring the melody in the right hand.

Although it is often claimed that Chopin did not intend either set of his Etudes to be presented complete and in sequence as a concert item, he certainly made sure that Op.25 would have a dramatic ending. No.11 in A minor, the longest of all the Etudes, is so much a tone poem in its combination of swirling semiquavers in the right hand and defiantly harmonised melody in the left that it has long been associated with the nickname of “Winter Wind.” After that, the uninterrupted cascade of arpeggios in No.12 in C minor - the two hands in parallel motion and rhythmic unison throughout - is both aptly and impressively conclusive.

Two Nocturnes, Op.62

No.1 in B major

No.2 in E major

Though written in emotionally fraught circumstances in 1846, shortly before the end of his relationship with George Sand, Chopin’s last two nocturnes are perhaps the most beautiful of them all. Certainly, the Nocturne in B major is comparable only with that in E flat major, Op.55, No.2, for the ecstatic quality of its piano writing. The first part of Op.62, No.1, presents the main theme in a comparatively simple form, richly harmonised and counterpointed though it is. It also includes, on the other hand, a short but florid episode for a fantasy nightingale in D sharp minor. After an A flat major middle section inspired more by harmonic than decorative enterprise, the main theme returns, preceded by a long trill and then most voluptuously elaborated with a whole series of trills covering every note of the melody. The nightingale is heard again towards the end of the piece, entering in D sharp minor as before but finally turning to B major by way of some extraordinarily exotic inflections in its extended vocal line.

In the style and shape of its opening theme, Op.62, No.2, seems to revert to the manner of the earlier nocturnes. But after the modulations it experiences as it is developed, and after an unsettling agitato middle section provoked by a suddenly eloquent left hand, the main theme is unable to recover its original E major serenity. So it is up to the eloquent left hand to resolve the harmonic ambiguities - which it eventually, if a little unwillingly, does.

Three Mazurkas, Op.59

No.1 in A minor

No.2 in A flat major

No.3 in F sharp minor

Although Chopin composed little at Nohant in the summer of 1845, he did complete a set of three mazurkas at the request of a friend whose father had just set up a music publishing business in Germany. Whether Stern of Berlin was alarmed or pleased by the provocative harmonies of the pieces that were sent to him, he certainly wasted no time in getting them into print. He had them on sale only four months later.

Beginning as an innocently pensive kujiawak in A minor, Op.59, No.1, is characteristic of the set in general in its disconcerting tendency to wander off into remote key areas. The solidly harmonised start to the middle section seems intent on anchoring it in the tonic major but that doesn’t last long in a development apparently so little concerned for the harmonic implications of its contrapuntal preoccupations that it reaches a point as far from A minor as it can get. So, as in the Second Impromptu, the main theme has to effect its re-entry a semitone flat. The tonic is restored with masterly imperceptibility but with no certain prospect of survival until the A minor chord in the very last bar.

There seems to be no fear of losing touch with the tonic in the Mazurka in A flat major, which presents its main theme no fewer than three times in the same key - though with increasingly passionate colouring - before briefly changing the subject in the middle section. At the behest of the left hand, it sets itself up apparently to repeat the process in the closing section when it slides gently out of control on a slippery slope of parallel chromatic harmonies. Once again, the situation is retrieved only in the closing bars.

Appearances are deceptive also in Op.59, No.3, which begins as a folky oberek in F sharp minor with Lydian sharpened fourth and one short motif obstinately repeated. The more sophisticated middle section in F has a tendency to wander off the point but it takes no more than an ostinato of drone harmonies to bring it back first to F sharp major and then to F sharp minor. An insistent left hand and an artfully contrived canon seem to have secured the conditions for a full-scale return of the opening section when a contrapuntal development involves the left hand in such a dissonant relationship with the right that the harmonic sense is quite disorientated. The ostinato from the middle section restores order but in F sharp major rather than F sharp minor and only with the intervention of a new melodic motif in the closing bars.

Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat major, Op.61

“I should now like to finish my Cello Sonata, Barcarole and something else that I don’t know how to name…” wrote Chopin in December 1845. In fact, four years earlier he had described his Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op.44, as “a sort of fantasy in the form of a polonaise,” as he might have remembered when he completed his new work in A flat major at Nohant in the summer of 1846. Certainly, none of his polonaises could more aptly be described as a fantasy than this one in A flat, which is more poetic than nationalist, more spontaneous in development, more ambitious in construction, more varied in colour than any of its kind - all in all, more fantasy than polonaise.

The longest of his piano works in one movement, the Polonaise-Fantaisie ranks alongside the Cello Sonata and the Barcarole as an indication of the large-scale structural mastery Chopin would have achieved had he lived only half as long as, say, Richard Strauss. It is an indication too of the still developing freedom of his imagination at this late point in his career. Conventions that might have constrained him are now more or less abandoned.

Listen, for example, for the characteristic polonaise rhythm and you will hear nothing of it throughout the introduction which, with its fateful descending fourths and its thoughtfully rising arpeggios, is in no dancing mood. Indeed, after the definitive introduction of the main theme and of another, more lively one, it is scarcely heard again. On its first reappearance, the main theme is poised above an accompani­ment of undulating triplets, almost as in a nocturne or impromptu.

There is nothing at all of the polonaise either in the più lento middle section in B major, which is a virtual slow movement remarkable for its lovely duet between an expressive left hand and a shy right, its elegant new theme in G sharp minor, and a characteristically poetic anthology of trills. Although some of the more prominent themes of the work are now passed under review - partly perhaps to establish the relationships between the rising arpeggios of the introduction and the left-hand melody of the più lento - there is no conventional third section to balance and reflect the first. The main theme does eventually make a triumphant reappearance on the crest of a crescendo accompanied by massive triplet chords in both hands. It is displaced, however, by a transformed version of the expressive left-hand melody from the middle section, its even quavers now altered to energetic dotted rhythms and its new found power yielding only to a low echo of the più lento trills in the final bars.

Ballade No.3 in A flat major, Op.47

Though not the most popular of the four ballades, No.3 in A flat major is much the most interesting, not least because of the enigmatic and quite unique quality of its construction. While sonata form might be a useful guide to the course taken by the other three, however far they might diverge from the background pattern, in this case it is best forgotten altogether. The clue is in the opening bars and the parlando nature of their thematic material. Clearly related to the opening bars of the First Ballade in G minor, where the bardic voice of the narrator is heard for the first time, they are the beginning of an extensive introduction designed to anticipate something of the character of the thematic protagonists to be featured later in the work. The division between the end of the introduction and the opening of the narrative is clearly defined by a sustained chord of A flat major.

The first and principal protagonist - anticipated in a dramatic and rhythmically disjointed intervention early in the introduction and now preceded by an outline of its rocking-horse rhythm in the right hand - is a gently lilting melody beginning in C major. It does not long remain in C and, as the story develops, it reveals a more violent and even (in a sequence of emphatically articulated chromatic harmonies) demonic side to its character. It reverts to C major innocence, this time to give way to a playful waltz-like theme and then to come back in A flat major. In a sonata-form construction that would be the beginning of the end. Here it is the beginning of a powerful development starting in C sharp minor and culminating in an ingenious combination of thematic material from the introduction with the main theme of the ballade itself. An accelerated recall of the waltz theme acts as a brief but brilliant coda.

Completed at Nohant in 1841, the Third Ballade was first performed by Chopin at a, by all accounts, memorable concert in the Salle Pleyel in Paris in February of the following year.

Three Mazurkas, Op.50

No.1 in G major

No.2 in A flat major

No.3 in C sharp minor

The Mazurka in C sharp minor, Op.50, No.3, ranks alongside the Mazurka in C minor, Op.56, No.3, as one of the two longest and most developed works of their kind. In fact, although they include obvious mazurka elements and even whole mazurka episodes, they are more fantasies or rhapsodies than dances. The problem for Chopin - and there is evidence that he did have some trouble putting the earlier set together - must have been in accommodating these inspired anomalies in their respective groups.

The solution he came up with for Op.50 in 1842 was to precede the C sharp minor fantasy with mazurkas average in length, clear in their ternary structure, not too complex in texture and at the same time usefully contrasted in style. The cheerful G major Mazurka is relatively close to the folk model, as the Lydian fourths so exotically confirm at one point. It is true that the right hand adds a counterpoint to the left-hand melody in the middle section and that the final section is expanded by the intrusion of material that has to be reconciled to the tonic key before the end. But, in a set including the C sharp minor Mazurka, that is no more than a timely preparation.

After being coaxed into apparently reluctant activity in the introduction, the A flat major piece is a charmingly sophisticated example of the salon mazurka with a surprisingly plain sister in D flat major in the middle section.

The most striking peculiarity of Op.50, No.3 - unusual in the mazurkas but increasingly in evidence in Chopin’s music in other genres at this time - is its contrapuntal interest. This is immediately clear from the canonic treatment of the plaintive little theme introduced by the right hand alone in the opening bars. Chopin makes several attempts to sustain a mazurka - which he does most successfully in a smoothly flowing oberek in B major - but the plaintive theme and its attendant voices return from time to time to impede its progress. It plays a particularly persistent part in the closing section which is much expanded and much confused by the harmonic implications of its uncompromising contrapuntal development.

Sonata No.3 in B minor, Op.58

Allegro maestoso

Scherzo: molto vivace

Largo

Finale: presto non tanto

Sonata form, uncomfortable as he was with its classical requirements, was something Chopin had to come to terms with. But he could only do it in his own way. Even in the Sonata in C minor, which he wrote as a student in Warsaw in 1828, he resisted what he no doubt considered the predictability of the academically constructed first movement. He got by very effectively in the two concertos a couple of years later and in 1839, in the Sonata in B flat minor, he bent the form to his own will with great authority. Bearing in mind the problems he had had to solve, no one can blame him for more or less reproducing in the first movement of his Sonata in B minor, Op.58, the structure he had carved out for himself five years earlier. He was to make a different and quite masterful approach to the same problem in his last major work, the Cello Sonata in G minor, in 1846.

The issues of the Allegro maestoso of the Piano Sonata in B minor are not the classical ones of balance and of reconciliation of tonal conflicts. Emotions are what matter. Key relationships are important, of course, but in the first movement the contrast in mood between the unsmiling first subject and the peaceful second subject - a contrast symbolised by their key relationship - is more significant. The tendency of the movement is not so much to re-assert the original key as to assert the optimism of the second subject over the initial mood. Which is why, after an improvisatory and apparently spontaneous development section, Chopin declines to recapitulate the opening theme, preferring to devote the last part of the construction to celebrating the serenity achieved by the second subject in B major.

Having got the most difficult part over, he now abandons his 1839 model. He retains his optimism in an uncommonly happy Scherzo in E flat major, setting the lovely middle section most significantly in B major, which is not only intriguingly remote from the outer sections but also reminiscent of the serenity achieved in the first movement.

The Largo is no funeral march. It begins with an unexpectedly dramatic gesture but then melts into a melodic rapture in B major which is not only sustained but actually intensified in the liberated modulations of the middle section. But Chopin without his nightmares would not be Chopin and they return to haunt him in the Finale - a persecuted movement of rondo shape and virtuoso velocity which finds emotional relief in the major-key episodes but no definitive security until, almost playfully, the coda asserts the key and affirms the mood it has been the whole function of the sonata to secure.

Gerald Larner©