Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op.60

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op.60

The Barcarolle was first performed at Chopin’s last concert in Paris - along with a Mozart piano trio, the last three movements of the Cello Sonata, the Berceuse and the recently completed Waltz in D flat major - in February 1847. It was written during composer’s last few months with George Sand in Nohant and, in spite of her troublesome family and the generally unhappy situation, represents him at the height of his powers. Its stylistic origin is, of course, the Venetian gondola song: after the short ballade-like introduction, all the attributes of the gondoliera are there - the 12/8 metre, the gentle rocking accompani­ment, the melody sung in seductive thirds. But this is only the beginning of a construction which transcends its origins. Basically, it is a ternary shape with a quicker middle section and, at the heart of that, a still quicker episode with a new theme in A major. The reappearance of that theme in F sharp major inspires the climax of the last section. Already far gone in his final illness by the time of the first performance and too weak to achieve a fortissimo, Chopin played this passage pianissimo with what must have been a peculiarly eerie effect.

Rondo in C minor, Op.1

When the Rondo in C minor was first published in this country in 1836 it bore the title Adieu à Varsovie - “Farewell to Warsaw” - which was a nice little fiction concealing the fact that it was written as long as eleven years earlier by a composer who was no more than a schoolboy at the time with several years of study at the Warsaw Conservatoire still ahead of him. Even so, it is an entertaining piece. Naively demonic in the characterization of its main theme and modishly conventional in its piano writing, it displays more fresh ideas than derivative ones and is harmonically most enterprising. The modulation from the C minor of the rondo theme to the E major of the più lento first episode is poetically achieved and the next modulation, which prepares the way for a reappearance of the new theme a semitone lower in D sharp major, is as surprising as it is logical.

Five Mazurkas

in G sharp minor, Op.33, No.1

in D flat major, Op.30, No.3

in F minor, Op.63, No.2

in C sharp minor, Op.63, No.3

in B flat minor, Op.24, No.4

Should the Mazurka in G sharp minor should be played Presto as in the first French edition, and as apparently indicated by the composer in his manuscript in 1838,Mesto as in the first German edition, or Lento as marked in Chopin’s hand in copies belonging to his pupils? There is not much difference between Lento and Mesto (“sad”), both of which directions seem appropriate to the harmonies and the texture of at least the outer sections of the piece. A Presto tempo, on the other hand, would give it a severe jolt - though not necessarily, depending on how it is done, a harmful one. Jolts are not excluded from Chopin mazurkas, as the extreme dynamic contrasts applied to the main theme of the one in D flat major from Op.30 clearly confirms.

Such energy as Chopin displays in Op.30, No.3, so vigorously transferring the rhythmic emphasis from the first to the second beat of the bar in the repeated notes at the beginning, becomes ever rarer in the mazurkas as he gets older. The three mazurkas of Op.63, the last to be published in the composer’s lifetime, were written in 1846, shortly after the completion of the Polonaise-Fantaisie and the Barcarolle, and are not yet as resigned as the two late examples (in G minor and F minor) from the summer of 1849. There is, however, an expression of pain in the appoggiaturas associated with the main theme of the Mazurka in F minor and, though based on the relative major, the chromatic harmonies of the middle section do little to relieve the situation. The Mazurka in C sharp minor, which has something of the exquisitely nostalgic atmosphere of the nocturnes, ends with a beautifully contrived canon at the octave with the lower voice shared between left hand and right.

The earliest mazurka in the present selection - in B flat minor Op.24, No.4, completed in 1835 - is structurally the most ambitious and in some ways the most inspired. In the variety of its material, the harmonic adventures experienced by its main themes and the expressive attitudes they assume, it is almost a ballade. At the same time, as Chopin so conscientiously alternates between episodes with the rhythmic emphasis on the third beat in the bar and others with the emphasis on the second, it is the essential mazurka.

Polonaise in A flat major, Op.53

The heroic intentions of the Polonaise in A flat are indicated from the start in the introductory flourishes and definitively confirmed in the strutting figuration of the main theme and its wide-striding accompaniment. The E major middle section, with its fortissimo spread chords and its rumbling left-hand octaves, is positively aggressive. And yet, at the point where the main theme would normally be expected to reappear, the conventional ternary strategy is deflected into an episode of finely articulated, chromatically inflected linear delicacy. A feature with no equivalent in the otherwise similar and even more popular Polonaise in A major - written four years earlier in 1838 - it adds a poetic dimension to truculent patriotism.

Ten Waltzes

in E flat major, Op.18

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 Grande 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.

Gerald Larner©