Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat major, Op.61

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat major, Op.61

At Nohant in the summer of 1846, shortly before his break with George Sand and when he still had the strength and the ambition to work on a comparatively large scale, Chopin completed a Cello Sonata with the most impressive of all his first-movement constructions. At much the same time he wrote his Polonaise-Fantaisie, which is remarkably complex in form and the longest of his piano works in one movement - longer than any of the ballades or scherzos, longer than any of the other polonaises, longer even than the F minor Fantasia of 1841. It was as though, while retaining his characteristic spontaneity of expression, he had deliberately set out to extend himself.

Prophetic of the large-scale structural mastery Chopin might have achieved had he lived only half as long as, say, Richard Strauss, the Polonaise-Fantaisie is an indication too of the still developing freedom of his imagination. As the title suggests, it is no ordinary polonaise. The conventions are taken for granted. Listen, for example, for the characteristic polonaise rhythm and you will hear nothing of it throughout the introduction, which is in no dancing mood. Indeed, after the first appearance of the main theme and another, more lively one, it is scarcely heard again.

On its second appearance, the main theme is poised above an accompani­ment of undulating triplets, almost as in a nocturne. There is nothing at all of the polonaise in the B major middle section, with its lovely duet between an expressive left hand and a shy right, its elegant theme in G sharp minor, and the poetic anthology of trills. Some of the more prominent themes of the work, including those of the introduction, are passed under review, but there is no conventional third section to balance and reflect the first. The main theme reappears on the crest of a crescendo, accompanied by massive triplet chords in both hands. It is displaced, however, by a still more forceful version of the expressive left-hand melody from the middle section, its even quavers now altered to an energetic dotted rhythm and surviving almost to the last bar.

12 Etudes, Op.25

No.1 in A flat major

No.2 in F minor

No.3 in F major

No.4 in A minor

No.5 in E minor

No.6 in G sharp minor

No.7 in C sharp minor

No.8 in D flat major

No.9 in G flat major

No.10 in B minor

No.11 in A minor

No.12 in C minor

Chopin apparently did not consider his Etudes to be so very different from the general run of technical studies available at the time. Far from protecting his pupils from the more or less mechanical Gradus ad Parnassum or School of Velocity kind of thing, he put them to work on Clementi, Cramer and Czerny even after he had completed his first set of twelve Etudes, Op.10. In 1839, three years after he had completed this second set, Op.25, he happily supplied three more examples for the frankly pedagogical Méthode des Méthodes of Fétis and Moscheles.

Some of Chopin’s more enlightened contemporaries, on the other hand, were very well aware of the uniquely imaginative quality of his achievement in these works. Liszt, to whom the Op.10 set was dedicated in 1833, definitively declared that “they spring, like all his works, from the nature of his poetic genius.” Schumann, always in search of piano studies which “offer nourishment for both hand and spirit,” said that Chopin’s “are all true poetic images.”

Schumann actually had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of the Op.25 set. “Imagine an Aeolian harp,” he wrote, “with all the scales mingled together by an artist’s hand in all kinds of fantastic decoration, but in such a way that you could always hear a deeper fundamental tone and a softly singing melody.” He was surely thinking of No.1 in A flat, a study which could be described in technical terms as an exercise in the legato articulation of rapid arpeggios in even semiquavers but with the melody notes made to stand out in the right hand and occasional bass notes in the left. In the same terms, No.2 in F minor is a cleverly calculated study in cross rhythms; according to Schumann, the composer made it sound “like a child singing in its sleep.” If he was less enthusiastic about Etude No.3 in F major - “also beautiful, if less original in character than in figuration” - it must be because he failed to appreciate the wit in Chopin’s treatment of his virtuoso material.

Like No.3 in F, most of the Etudes retain the same figuration throughout. No.4 in A minor, however, which is basically a study in staccato, ingeniously mixes syncopated legato phrases with the clipped off-beat chords in the right hand. Occasionally the composer goes so far as to introduce a contrasting middle section, like the lovely E major trio of the miniature scherzo which is No.5 in E minor. In No.6 in G sharp minor the right hand is occupied exclusively with a brilliantly frivolous continuity of parallel thirds. No.7 in C sharp minor, on the other hand, is deeply serious, calling for a left hand of exceptional eloquence and a tactful right. Whereas No.8 in D flat is a sustained exercise in parallel sixths in the right hand. with conflicting phrasing in the left, and whereas No.9 in G flat flutters along in the same “butterfly” figuration from the beginning almost to the end, the fierce double-octaves of No.10 in B minor give way to a lyrical middle section in the relative major, the octaves now radiantly colouring the melody in the right hand.

Although it is often claimed that Chopin did not intend either set of his Etudes to be presented complete and in sequence as a concert item, he certainly made sure that Op.25 would have a dramatic ending. No.11 in A minor, the longest of all the Etudes, is so much a tone poem in its combination of swirling semiquavers and defiantly harmonised melody that it has long been associated with the nickname of “Winter Wind.” After that, the uninterrupted cascade of arpeggios in No.12 in C minor - the two hands in parallel motion and rhythmic unison throughout - is both aptly and impressively conclusive.

Two Nocturnes, Op .27

No.1 in C sharp minor

No.2 in D flat major

Of the two Nocturnes written in 1845 for the Countess d’Apponyi, pianists tend to prefer the second in D flat major. The first in C sharp minor is particularly interesting, however, for the peculiarly personal use Chopin makes of a common harmonic device - left-hand C sharp arpeggios omitting the third of the triad and a right-hand melody equivocating poignantly between E and E sharp. Any of Chopin’s contemporaries could have done it but only a composer inspired by the sound of the piano - by the contrast in colour between the dark shadow of the left-hand arpeggios and the bright line of the melodic voice - could have made anything as beautiful of it. In the end, incidentally the decision is made in favour of C sharp major, but only after and long and agitated middle section.

The attraction of the D flat major Nocturne is, above all, its highly decorative passages of purely pianistic figuration. It is also a masterful example of continuous melodic development, uninterrupted by a contrasting middle section, effortlessly sustained in the right hand over a regular arpeggio in the left.

Four Impromptus

in A flat major, Op.29

in F sharp major, Op.36

in G flat major, Op.51

Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op.66

Chopin’s earliest and most popular impromptu was originally described as a “Fantaisie pour Mme d’Este” and was published as Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op.66, only after his death. It does, however, have the same shape and the same expressive scope as the three works which appeared under the Impromptu title during the composer’s lifetime. The title derives, presumably, from Schubert’s Op.90 and Op.142 - though not necessarily directly since, with its inbuilt excuse for structural weakness, the form became excessively popular in the salons of the 1830s.

Chopin’s first acknowledged Impromptu was the one in A flat major, Op.29, written and published in 1837. Like the Fantaisie-Impromptu, it is in ternary form, with outer sections based on a distinctively keyboard kind of figuration and a song-like episode between them - the F minor middle section having something melodically in common, incidentally, with the A flat major middle section of the Fantaisie-Impromptu.

Although the harmonic ingenuity of the outer sections of Op.29 is by no means conventional, the next Impromptu - in F sharp major, Op.36 - is obviously more experimental. Here, after the march-like D major middle section, Chopin recalls the first section a semi-tone flat, so to speak, in F major and then immediately repeats it in F sharp major and extends it with decorative writing which demands long-sustained delicacy from the pianist’s right hand.

The last of the authentic Impromptus, Op.51 - which was written three years after Op.36, in 1842 - is perhaps the best of them, though obviously not the most adventurous. Being, enharmonically, in the same key as Op.36, the contrast between the two is all the clearer: the middle section is in the relative minor and the transition back to G flat major is made smoothly and directly. On the other hand, the modulations and melodic developments in the outer section have the uncalculated spontaneity of the true impromptu.

Chopin himself thought little of the G flat Impromptu, dismissing it as something he wrote as a favour for a friend. But nor did he think much of the work published in 1855 as his Fantaisie-Impromptu. His objection to it was that it was too much like all the other impromptus proliferating at the time: its outer sections do, in fact, owe much to a Moscheles Impromptu in E flat, which was published in the same year as Chopin wrote his Fantaisie pour Mme d’Este. Later generations have judged it differently and, indeed, made fortunes out of it by putting words to it.

Variations in B flat major on Là ci darem la mano, Op.2

Although Chopin is not known to have made any kind of arrangement of his Mozart Variations for piano and orchestra, pianists have had access to a solo version ever since 1839 when the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger - who had published the original nine years earlier - issued an arrangement with the orchestral part incorporated in the piano part. The composer presumably had no objection. In any case, in a work even less resourcefully scored for orchestra than the piano concertos Chopin was to write two or three years later, the losses are minimal. In tonight’s version, which is based on an edition by the Chopin pupil Karol Mikuli, the work is a few minutes shorter. Since the cuts are made mainly in the overlong preparation for the first statement of the Mozart theme - the Giovanni and Zerlina’s duet Là ci darem la mano from the first act of Don Giovanni - this need not be considered a serious deprivation. The one disadvantage of the arrangement is that, without the orchestral part, the second variation (disingenuously headed Veloce, ma accuratamente) sounds too like the first (Brillante) where the theme is similarly disguised in the left hand.

Whatever Chopin thought of the solo-piano arrangement, the original version, which he had introduced to the world in Vienna in 1829, had served its purpose: the Haslinger edition of the score had brought the composer to the attention of Robert Schumann who, in his first published piece of music criticism, promptly proclaimed him a genius. Although Schumann was over-imaginative in hearing all kinds of allusions to the opera in the variations - Chopin said he “could die laughing” at such extravagant notions - he was uncommonly perceptive in detecting true creativity where others saw only “bravura and figuration.” There is no shortage of those things but there is also much beauty in the Sempre sostenuto third variation, no little rhythmic wit in the Con bravura fourth variation and, after the peculiarly operatic but distinctly non-Mozartian Adagio introduction to the fifth and last variation, an irresistibly vigorous Alla Polacca.

Gerald Larner©