Polonaise in F sharp minor Op.44 (1841)

The Polonaise in F sharp minor is the ultimate expression of Chopin’s national identity. This is not so much because of its epic scale – it is the longest polonaise before the Polonaise-Fantasie, Op.61 – or its ominouly rumbling introduction, or its grimily militant main theme, or even its shameless strutting on a relentlessly repeated rhythm towards the middle of the piece: it scores Polish points over every other work of its kind by incorporating a mazurka as its middle section. The contrast between the aggressively robust polonaise sections in F sharp minor and the poetic mazurka in A major, harmonised at first in intimate thirds and sixths, is at a dangerous extreme. The mazurka is, however, so skilfully integrated by its thematic relationships with the outer sections that it can be developed both freely and at length. As a mazurka alone it would be an outstanding achievement. As a polonaise and a mazurka combined it is an extraordinary and remarkably successful synthesis.

“It is a sort of Fantasy in the form of a Polonaise,” Chopin wrote to his publisher in Vienna as he was working on it at Nohant in 1842, “and I shall call it a Polonaise.” He would develop that idea in a different way and on a different level in his Op.61 three or four years later.