Description
The fourth ballade is an ambitious work, even compared to the earlier three. Like many of Chopin’s late works it heavily contrapuntal; here, though, the counterpoint is foregrounded and deployed in unusually dramatic way (the hushed processional at m.58, the stark canon at m.134, and the wild coda). A lot of Chopin’s best textural writing also occurs here, particularly in the apotheosis of T2, in which LH arpeggio accompaniment is given extremely sophisticated treatment (countermelodies, cross-rhythms). The coda is a masterclass in how entirely conventional diatonic harmony can be made to sound exotic, even as it’s unified by the motif (idea?) of continuous descent. Unusually the work also deploys quite a few etude-like textures: extended passages in 6ths (mm.106+) and 3rds (mm.215+), plus four glorious bars lifted right out of the Ocean Etude (mm.191-4).
It's in the structure, though, where this ballade makes its biggest plays; it’s stuffed full of big long-term gambits that have a very late-Beethovenian drama about them. Take the opening: it sounds like a standalone theme, until T1’s entrance reveals it to be a dominant preparation. So far, so good – a neat little harmonic recontextualization, you might say, much like the opening of the first ballade. Except that later on in the work, this introduction recurs in A, and this time, it’s an actual dominant preparation, marking the end of the development and paving the way for the recap (if you call it that) in D minor (which then quickly moves back into the tonic F minor).
This work features an infamous false ending, a I-V-I spasm in C that judders the music to a halt at m.202. There’s nice symmetry in this: a false beginning in C, and a false ending in the same key. But when pianissimo chords enter after this “ending”, they repeat, structurally and narratively, the introduction. They hint at their dominant function only by means of a Bb introduced in m.205 (exactly as the intro does).
Of the ballades, this one is the most explicitly indebted to variation form, with T1 recurring throughout in various guises. It’s this variational impulse layered atop (or undergirding, as you have it) sonata logic that makes this the most structurally ambiguous of all the ballades. But I think there’s some sense in analysing this as a sonata, not least because of how much it relies on dominant-tonic progression and large-scale tension and release. (You can even read this as a sonata with a development section that ends only with the coda, which replaces the recap.)
00:00 – Tipo. One of the all-time great Chopin recordings. The control of tone/colour/dynamic is astonishing (see the colour change at m.6 or the floating line melodic line at m.169.) The sound is more extroverted and spontaneous than you’d expect but nothing is remotely forced. Nice details emerge in the LH (the descending bassline from m.181), which is often used to impart huge energy (the added bass hits at mm.186, 191, the chromatic descent from m.215). There’s an inspired touch at the big chords at m.202 (9:43) – Tipo uses the pedal to catch just the bass resonance of the low C, leaving it growling under the quiet chords which come after.
11:19 – Sultanov. Highly gestural, imaginative; Sultanov has more ideas in one interpretation than most pianists have in a dozen. Repeated phrases are never literal; sometimes they softly shadow the earlier one (as in T1), sometimes they are voiced differently (compare mm.211-2 and 213-4). Scales are always washes of colour. There is magnificent treatment of counterpoint, particularly in the echoing repeated notes at m.125 (16:42), or the conjured lower line at m.147. The climax is ecstatically intense, but there is lots of tenderness too: see the phrasing from m.169, where silences are allows to hang.
21:27 – Anderszewski. An interpretation obsessed with silence. The introduction melts out of nothing; the transition from m.38 is ghostly and expressionless; the last of the repeated Gbs at m.56 is barely audible. The general mood is intensely withdrawn until the climax and coda, when the playing turns very expressive. At m.173, for example, the pedal is lifted to allow the LH to burble. The coda throbs with menace, helped by very canny voicing; the rarely heard lower RH line from mm.217-8 (32:23) comes to the fore, as does that restless LH line from m.219.
33:20 – Hough. Proof that an effective interpretation of a heavyweight work can contain a lot of air, even a certain casualness. There’s the way different melodic lines are teased apart in the opening, the myriad micro-inflections of T1, and the improvisatory phrasing of the fioritura variation. There’s no point-making, yet detail is never overlooked. Re: the latter, Hough consistently turns scales into magic; the long chromatic descent at m.167 is an impressionistic haze, and the rising LH scales immediately after are so smooth they sound like glissandi heard from underwater.