Description
The sunniest of the ballades. There’s a dancelike, even laidback quality to a lot of a material – you can almost say all three themes here are in major (the second is in Fm but is first presented in major, and often journeys there anyway). Occasionally a passage (very unusually for Chopin) will even verge on humour; see mm.46-49, where Chopin writes a purely decorative arpeggiated chord high in the treble that briefly pauses the music, before the tail of the melody sounds from the opposite end of the keyboard. Or the first idea of T3, which features an upward grace note arpeggio that starts modestly enough, but eventually grows to silly (and rhythm-distorting) size (mm.116, 118, 122). This sense of play is further enhanced by the constant syncopation – see mm.42-44 (emphasis on the second of six beats), and indeed the whole of T2 (emphasis on the 3rd and 6th beats).
Structurally, this work is similar to the first ballade – an archlike ABCBA with a reverse recapitulation (themes presented in reverse order), and a little waltz episode marking the midpoint of the arch. Like the second ballade, this work has no introduction, but it’s unlike all the others in that its coda is a fleet, champagne-bubbly flourish, rather than the typical extended dramatic, minor-mode blitz. The coda here is also unusual in that it obviously draws on thematic material, even serving as a recap of sorts.
This work features two of Chopin’s best transfigurations – the C# climax at m.173 where T2 sheds all dancelike character, and the ecstatic realisation of T1 at m.213. One final unusual feature – in the development from m.183 Chopin interleaves T1 and T2 into a single line, and I can’t recall for the life of me if he uses thematic combination of this sort in any other work.
00:00 – Ousset. As Gould might put it, Ousset gives this work a spine. It’s not a delicate adventitious thing but a real, robust dance. There’s no hesitation about producing big sounds (see the Ab octaves starting from m.9), and little fussing around with prettifying rubato. The sense of propulsion is delicious, especially in T2 – see also how the transitional octaves [m.50-3] are taken in strict time, without the customary dynamic/agogic easing-in. Because of this, large-scale ebbs and flows come across really clearly – Chopin writes lots of long crescendi and de- which often get a little lost, but not so here. This isn’t to say there aren’t lovely things happening in the moment – the outward leaps from m.26 on (0:51) are some of the most liquid and fluent I’ve heard.
06:44 – Ancelle. A superb recording in the modern style – i.e., no grand conceptions, but a suffusion of lovely details pulled off well. Like Ousset the tempo is on the quick side, and T2 is played with a certain casualness – lots of micro-accelerations through scalar passages. There is hyperfine control over dynamic and voicing. At m.86-7, the transition between accented and non-accented notes is very carefully managed, and in T3 the interaction between the two hands is used to give the music (especially on the RH descents) a particularly melting character. The rhetorical (accelerando, pedal off at the end) phrasing of the final flourish from mm.237-8 is a nice touch.
13:38 – Luisada. Free, intimate. T1 is given an improvisational treatment, as if it’s feeling itself out. Both hands almost never play exactly together in a very old-school way. This style works especially in a piece like this, which is less argumentative and goal-driven than the other ballades. Lots of LH details bubble to the surface, such as the surprises in T3, the articulation at m.71, or the rumbling dissonances in the tremolo at m.183. Phrasing is free but never wayward – there’s always some important feature being highlighted, such as a key change (m.102, 225) a nice harmony (m.142), or the high point of a phrase (m.59, 140). This is the kind of playing you do for friends at home, and I wish we had more of this stuff on record.
21:56 – Katsaris. A nice combination of detail- and goal-oriented playing. The tempo + phrasing produce an interpretation always pointing somewhere, but there’s also a lot of attention to polyphony (see the LH line from mm.41-4, or the lower voice conjured at m.109 & 150), dynamics (the Ab chord at 23:32 is resolved into so gently it is basically inaudible) and characterisation. T3 is especially playful; the grace notes arpeggios are taken early (contra urtext recommendation) and sans pedal, so that the high notes are highlighted both by landing on the beat and having a new sonority. I love how literally Katsaris takes the semiquaver pause at m.216 (28:29)– both tongue-in-cheek and very dramatic.