Frédéric Chopin – a bicentenary focus - Page 3

A guide to the composer, his works and the essential recordings

Frédéric Chopin (photo: Tully Potter)

The works

Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante in E flat (1830)

The polonaise had long been out of fashion as a dance form when Chopin revived it. He wrote 18, all for piano solo except two: his Introduction and Polonaise brillante (for cello and piano) and this one. It’s a good example of what Chopin was writing at the age of 20, yet this was to be the last of his six compositions using an orchestra. Both parts of the work are heard as often as not as a piano solo these days. The Polonaise (and you’ll hear within a few bars why it’s called grand  and brillant) is preceded by the nocturne-like Andante (“It makes one think of a lake on a calm bright summer day,” wrote one commentator). Spianato? Spiana is Italian for a carpenter’s plane and so it becomes an apt description for “planed, level, smooth” music.

Recommended recordings

Richter; LSO / Kondrashin (BBC Legends) Buy CD from Amazon

Arrau; LPO / Inbal (Philips) Download from Passionato Buy CD from Amazon

Four Ballades (1836-42)

“Arias without words”, “poetic stories” – these are the best ways to describe the four masterpieces for solo piano that Chopin called Ballades. Almost every pianist has (or has had) them in his or her repertoire: No 1 in G minor (Chopin’s own favourite) and No 3 in A flat (which Sir Winston Churchill called “the rocking-horse piece” – he was particularly fond of it) are the most heard. No 2 in F has been interpreted as the “struggle between a wild flower and the wind”, while the pianist John Ogdon thought No 4 in F minor was the most powerful of all Chopin’s compositions. Its technical difficulties apparently infuriated Chopin’s contemporaries.

Recommended recordings

Perahia (Sony Classical) Buy CD from Amazon

Kissin (RCA Red Seal) Buy CD from Amazon 

Hough (Hyperion) Download or buy CD from Hyperion

Cortot (Naxos) Buy CD from Amazon