Piano Concerto No.2 in F minor Op.21

A year or two before he left Warsaw for the last time, eventually to settle in Paris, Chopin fell in love with a young singer called Konstancja Gladkowska. He never told her of his feelings and nothing came of this teenage passion – except, as he confessed to his best friend, the slow movement of the Piano Concerto in F minor and a Waltz in D flat major. While the outer movements of the Concerto are a remarkable achievement for any composer of the period, let alone a student only just out of the Warsaw Conservatoire, the Larghetto is uncommonly inspired and a clear demonstration of the emergence of a unique poetic genius.

Isolated from the mainstream of musical development, as he inevitably was as long as he stayed in Poland, Chopin probably knew nothing of the Piano Concertos of Beethoven, which were much the most developed of their kind. Certainly, there is no trace of a Beethoven influence in either of Chopin’s two examples. They belong to a different tradition. Ultimately they derive from Mozart but more directly from his pupil Hummel and other virtuoso composer-pianists who lavished most of their attention on a brilliant solo part and reduced the role of the orchestra to the subservient functions of providing a framework and a variably sonorous background accompaniment.

In the first movement of the Concerto in F minor, following the Hummel model, Chopin begins with an orchestral exposition of the main themes. From the long-term point of view, the most important material here is the first four notes on violins in the opening bars: they are heard frequently throughout the movement, either as part of the rueful melody that grows out of it or, far more often, detached from it as a separate little motif. The most attractive material is the serenely lyrical second subject quietly introduced some time later by a wind band and immediately repeated by violins. The role of the piano, which makes its first entry on a brief flourish of arpeggios, is to embellish, develop and generally improvise on those main themes and another romantic idea interpolated at some length between the two. Chopin’s invention in this respect, in spinning delicate webs of keyboard figuration out of the basic melodic material, is inexhaustible.

The Larghetto has justly been described as Chopin’s first nocturne. Inspired by his dreams of Konstancja Gladkowska, it is an exquisite expression of amorous enchantment quite unlike any other music that had been heard up to that time. If the atmosphere is disturbed in the operatic middle section, where the piano voices its anxiety in unharmonised recitative over dramatic tremolandos in the strings, a sympathetic bassoon helps the soloist restore it in an even more beautifully detailed closing section.

The last movement is a rondo based on the mazurka melody presented by the soloist in the opening bars. Before the rondo theme is heard again an abundance of new tunes is introduced – on piano, on clarinet and other woodwind, on violins and, over a rhythm tapped by the wood of the bow on the strings, on piano again. Although it is little more than a simple arpeggio, this last piano tune assumes more and more importance, above all when a slightly altered version of it is sounded on a solo horn to signal the beginning of a sustained, brilliantly colourful and tirelessly agile coda.

A year or two before he left Warsaw for the last time, eventually to settle in Paris, Chopin fell in love with a young singer called Konstancja Gladkowska. He never told her of his feelings and nothing came of this teenage passion – except, as he confessed to his best friend, the slow movement of the Piano Concerto in F minor and a Waltz in D flat major. While the outer movements of the Concerto are a remarkable achievement for any composer of the period, let alone a student only just out of the Warsaw Conservatoire, the Larghetto is uncommonly inspired and a clear demonstration of the emergence of a unique poetic genius.

Isolated from the mainstream of musical development, as he inevitably was as long as he stayed in Poland, Chopin probably knew nothing of the Piano Concertos of Beethoven, which were much the most developed of their kind. Certainly, there is no trace of a Beethoven influence in either of Chopin’s two examples – the so-called Second Piano Concerto in F minor and the so-called First Piano Concerto in E minor which, though written a year later, was published before the other and so took the earlier number. They belong to a different tradition. Ultimately they derive from Mozart but more directly from his pupil Hummel and other virtuoso composer-pianists like Moscheles, who lavished most of their attention on a brilliant solo part and reduced the role of the orchestra to the subservient functions of providing a framework and a variably sonorous background accompaniment.

In the first movement of the Concerto in F minor, following the Hummel model, Chopin begins with an orchestral exposition of the main themes. From the long-term point of view, the most important material here is the first four notes on violins in the opening bars: they are heard frequently throughout the movement, either as part of the rueful melody that grows out of it or, far more often, detached from it as a separate little motif. The most attractive material is the serenely lyrical second subject quietly introduced some time later by a wind band and immediately repeated by violins. The role of the piano, which makes its first entry on a brief flourish of arpeggios and a literal version of the first subject with its introductory four-note motif, is to embellish, develop and generally improvise on those main themes and another romantic idea interpolated at some length between the two. Chopin’s invention in this respect, in spinning delicate webs of keyboard figuration out of the basic melodic material, is inexhaustible. The soloist does, however, take two significant rests to allow the orchestra to make the transitions from the exposition to the development and from there to the recapitulation.

The Larghetto has justly been described as Chopin’s first nocturne. Inspired by his dreams of Konstancja Gladkowska, it is an exquisite expression of amorous enchantment quite unlike any other music that had been heard up to that time. If the atmosphere is disturbed in the operatic middle section, where the piano voices its anxiety in unharmonised recitative over dramatic tremolandos in the strings, a sympathetic bassoon helps the soloist restore it in an even more beautifully detailed closing section.

The last movement is a rondo based on the mazurka melody presented by the soloist in the opening bars. Before the rondo theme is heard again an abundance of new tunes is introduced – on piano, on clarinet and other woodwind, on violins and, over a rhythm tapped by the wood of the bow on the strings, on piano again. Although it is little more than a simple arpeggio, this last piano tune assumes more and more importance, above all when a slightly altered version of it is sounded on a solo horn to signal the beginning of a sustained, brilliantly colourful and tirelessly agile coda.