Ballade No.4 in F minor (Chopin).

The circumstances of composition are poorly documented, though it appears that Chopin began composing this work shortly after the completion of Ballade No. 3. By December 1842, the No.4 was finished, and he offered it for sale to Breitkopf & Härtel, along with the Heroic Polonaise and the fourth Scherzo.
The work was dedicated to Baroness Rothschild, wife of Nathaniel de Rothschild, who had invited Chopin to play in her Parisian residence, where she introduced him to the aristocracy and nobility.

“Chopin was the first to apply the word ‘Ballade’ to music”, wrote Robert Schumann in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik of 25 October 1842 (vol. 34, no. 17, p. 142). Schumann reports that Chopin “was inspired to write his Ballades by some poems of Adam Mickiewicz” (Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, ed. Martin Kreisig, Leipzig, 1914, vol. 2,p. 32). Nonetheless, no testimony from
Chopin survives to support the idea that he was attempting to apply the poetic substance of Mickiewicz’s ballades to his own piano compositions.
Together with the Barcarolle, the Polonaise-Fantaisie, and the second and third sonatas, the Fourth Ballade represents the summit of Chopin’s art. The tentative start is haunting and suggestive and was once beautifully described by the critic Joan Chissell as bringing the same sense of wonder that a blind person, if granted the gift of sight, might feel on discovering the world’s beauty for the first time.

The tempo is Andante con moto (slow with motion i.e. variable speed, according to emotion) in 6/8 time.

(This Ballad is full of anguish: after the short introduction it feels as if Chopin is having a conversation, more like a revealing of inner turmoil, with a consoling soul. Throughout the whole work there is a feeling of unrest, culminating in a violent out-burst at the end, in a very agitated form. At 10' 23'' Chopin goes into a dreamy state with the main theme, almost like a nocturne.
From 1837 his pulmonary problems were beginning to manifest themselves, and, although his lover, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, the novelist George Sand, did her best to look after him, the situation did not help with her two children (from her previous marriage to François Casimir Dudevant) needing the attentions of their mother. One can only imagine the stresses and strains of such a liaison. Hence, I feel, such feelings in this work).

GlynGlynn, alias GB, realiser.
Please feel free to leave any comments, be they good, bad, or indifferent as to whether the piece, or the performance, moved you in any way whatsoever!

(Since music is an aural art, and not a visual one, it is best to listen to these pieces, and other artists performances, with eyes closed, so as to be able to listen intently as to how the music is portrayed).