Ballade No.2 in B minor

Although Liszt was sincere in his flattery of Chopin when he adopted forms indelibly associated with the other composer - polonaise, mazurka, berceuse, ballade - he was not always wise in indulging himself in that way. The Ballade in B minor, which was written in 1853 and is one of the more successful in this group of works, encapsulates the problem most interestingly. In the opening section Liszt himself rises unmistakably in B minor out of chromatic rumblings at the bottom end of the keyboard. The key changes to F sharp major and Chopin enters equally unmistakably in a brighter register of the instrument with an elegantly expressive melody harmonised mainly in tenths. The rest of the work is a quest to balance and reconcile these two contrasting elements as they pass through a variety of ballade-style adventures. What the Liszt themes gains in military vigour the Chopin theme compensates for by taking on a lyrical ally. When, towards the end, Liszt waxes eloquent in the tenor register in B major and is then glorified in a heroic grandioso in the same key it seems that his more poetic colleague has finally been forced out of the way but (in the revised and more commonly performed ending) Chopin makes an irresistible last appear­ance just before the very quiet closing bars.

There is a tradition that the Ballade is actually based on Gottfried Bürger’s Lenore, which was later adopted as the subject of the Fifth Symphony by Liszt’s Weimar associate Joachim Raff and of an early symphonic poem by Henri Duparc. It is difficult, however, to reconcile the events of Bürger’s spooky ballad with those of the Ballade in B minor.