Waltzes - 10

Ten Waltzes

in E flat major, Op.18 (Valse brillante)

in A flat major, Op.42

in A flat major, Op.69, No.1

in F major, Op.34, No.3

in A minor, Op.34, No.2

in A flat major, Op.34, No.1

in C sharp major, Op.64, No.2

in G flat major, Op.70, No.1

in B minor, Op.69, No.2

in E minor, Op. Posth.

Although Chopin’s piano waltzes have little in common with the ballroom waltzes of Lanner and Strauss - “I haven’t got what it takes for the Viennese waltz,” the composer once confessed - it is surely more than merely coincidental that the earliest of his mature waltzes was written in Vienna. Published as Valse brillante in 1834, it is a highly sophisticated example of the medley form traditionally associated with the waltz. It contains no fewer than six main themes, four of them contained in an abundant middle section which ranges freely from D flat to G flat major. The ternary pattern, completed by the return of the fanfare which had opened the piece (and which finds a percussive echo in several of the themes) and the recapitulation of the first section, is no more than conventional. The witty allusion to the middle section, on the other hand, and the vertiginous coda are two of the characteristics which distinguish a Chopin waltz from countless others written for the same salons at the same time.

The Waltz in E flat, Op.18, had to wait three years for publication. It is an indication of the developing popularity of Chopin’s piano music in general and his waltzes in particular that the one in A flat, Op.42, was published as soon as it was completed in Paris in 1842 - eccentric though it is by ordinary standards, from its long opening trill onwards. Known as the “Two-Four Waltz,” it is inspired above all in the apparently duple-time main theme carried by the right hand over a triple-time accompaniment in the left.

The two Waltzes, Op.69, were first published in 1855, six years after the composer’s death. The A flat major, a mature and exquisitely conceived little piece, remained out of sight for twenty years only because it was written for the composer’s fiancée Maria Wodzinska. After the breakdown in their relationship in 1837, Maria inscribed her copy with the words “L’Adieu.” Her inscription is so well suited to the regretful mood of the opening that, in spite of the rather more cheerful mazurka-like middle section, it has survived as an unofficial title to the work. It seems a pity to spoil the story by adding the unromantic information that, in later years, several other ladies received personal manuscript copies of the Waltz in A flat major.

Written at various dates between the Waltzes in E flat major, Op.18, and A flat major, Op.42, the three Valses brillantes, Op.34, were first published in 1838. The latest of them of them, in F major, written in the summer of 1838 for one of Chopin’s pupils, is known as the “Cat Waltz,” presumably because of the kittenish figuration in the middle section and its witty return at the end. The Waltz in A minor, though written in Vienna at much the same time as the Grande Valse brillante, Op.18, could scarcely be more different: with its sombre first theme in the left hand and the abrupt changes from major to minor in the middle section, it has a distinctly Slavonic melancholy about it. The A flat major Waltz, on the other hand, is comparable with the Grande Valse brillante in every way, except that it was written by a composer four years older and wiser. The introduction, though not unlike that of Op.18, is four times as long and it is more closely integrated with the fabric of the piece. It reappears in a variant version at the beginning of the middle section, where it inspires improvisatory enterprise so spontaneous as to transcend the limitations of the 4 by 4 phrasing and the 16-bar paragraphs endemic to the form.

Though less ambitious than the Valses brillantes, the three late Waltzes, Op.64 - written and published in 1847 - represent a kind of purification of the form, with a clearly defined ternary structure and an evident thematic economy. The charmingly poignant C sharp minor Waltz - a not too distant relation of the mazurkas in the same key - has only three main themes. The expressive syncopations cutting across the bar lines in the D flat major middle section offer a valuable relief from metric regularity.

Of the three Op.70 waltzes published in 1855, the G flat major is the most brilliant. Written perhaps as early as 1831, it is also - not least because of its Schubertian middle section - the most Viennese of all Chopin’s waltzes. The B minor, Op.69, No.2, which dates from 1829, is one of the earliest of the surviving waltzes and an outstandingly pretty example of the basic ternary variety, with faintly rueful melodies in B minor and D major in the outer sections and a bright B major middle section. The Waltz in E minor, written a year later, though obviously less ambitious than the Valses brillantes is no less well endowed with characteristic grace and charm.