Two Polonaises, Op.40

No.1 in A major

No.2 in C minor

The most popular of Chopin’s polonaises is not the most characteristic of them. While it is true that the Polonaise in A major, Op.40, No.1, has most of qualities expected of a work of its kind, it is also true that they are displayed in such abundance that there is no room for anything else. It is unmistakably heroic in character, for example, but nowhere in the A major outer sections or in the D major middle section is there a hint of a more intimate or poetic side to its personality. It is stirringly massive in sound - not least in the six or seven-note chords hammered in rhythmic unison in the opening section, still more in the trills so emphatically applied to the octaves heralding the last appearance of the fanfare theme of the middle section - but the dynamic level is sustained at forte or above.

Clearly, Chopin intended the two Op.40 Polonaises - the first of them written in Paris in 1838, the second all but completed in Majorca a year later - to be taken as a pair. The contrast to the triumphalism of the so-called “Military” Polonaise in A major is in the sorrow of its companion in C minor.

The scoring of the later work is, at first, scarcely more intimate than that of its predecessor: the repeated chords in the right hand and the heavy octaves carrying the melody in the left seem to proclaim some public rather than private grief (and the fact that the theme is a minor-key version of that of Karol Kurpinski’s “Coronation” Polonaise surely confirms that this was Chopin’s intention). It is significant too that as soon as there is a suggestion of the proud polonaise rhythm in a major key the harmonies run away from it. The same problem motivates the middle section where lyrical material in A flat major is brought into contact with more reminders of the polonaise rhythm and, gently applied though they are this time, cannot accommodate them.