Played by LAFFITTE
Ballade in G Minor, Op. 23
Scherzo, in B Minor, Op. 20
LISZT spoke of Chopin as ' le musicien Ie plus poete quo jamais '—the most poetic of all musicians. And of none of his music is that quite so true as of the Ballades : in them, most people are agreed, he reached the highest pinnacle of his art. There are four, and the world of music has often bewailed the fact that there are no more.
Schumann records that they were inspired by the poems of Chopin's fellow-countryman, Mickiewicz-Chopin told him so, adding that it would be easy to write words for them. And they are ballads in the narrative sense: each has a story to tell, which the listener may very well imagine for himself.
The first is a sad tale, beginning, after a short introduction, quite simply, though with a deep sense of pathos, rising to a strongly passionate outburst. The second, too, begins with an almost folk-song simplicity, on which a restless mood breaks in; the third, graceful, seductive, has a thought of deep tenderness running through it, and the. fourth, with its wonderful variants of the chief theme, is in a mood of wistfulness and longing.
If ' Scherzo ' had kept its original meaning
' a jest '—then Chopin's had indeed been badly named. Nothinglight-hearted, no real merriment nor fun, has found its way into them, no hopeful thought that it is not shadowed by unhappiness. The first has been described as depicting a bewildered spirit striving in vain to break through its prison-walls of circumstance; the second, richer and more varied in its emotional expression than the others, Schumann thought of as like one of Byron's poems, with-something of Byron's scorn in its make-up. The third, agitated, striving, in the main, has its happier moments, with short passages of broad melody, and the fourth, capricious and wayward, has also a charmingly melodious section.