Four Centuries of Great Music November 20, 2021 Chamber Music of Frederic Chopin

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are celebrating Frederic Chopin.  I am sure many of you questioned why I did not include music by Chopin and Liszt on my three shows celebrating piano music.  And that was because, I was planning a full episodes on both Chopin and Liszt.  And today we are focusing on the chamber music of Chopin, so we will be going a bit broader than just his piano music, but include several pieces of his piano music as well.

We are opening our show with Chopin’s Grande Polonaise Brillante. Chopin sketched out the Grande polonaise brillante in 1830 in Warsaw, shortly before leaving his native land for good.  This work is often paired the Andante spianato which he would write several years later, in 1834, as a diptych. The Grande polonaise brillante is probably the last example of the brilliant style typical of Chopin’s early works and contrasts with it’s partner in the diptych. These works were written for piano and orchestra.  Chopin premiered the diptych on April 26, 1835 at the Paris Conservatoire, accompanied by an orchestra led by the founder of the Société des concerts du conservatoire, François Antoine Habeneck. The orchestra plays a secondary role in both works, so both work is generally performed for solo piano, as we will have here, with the pianist performing the orchestral parts.          

Next is Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A♭ major, Op. 47.  This was written probably in the fall of 1841 as the piece was first mentioned by Chopin in a letter to Julian Fontana on 18 October 1841.  Of his 4 ballades this has one of the tightest structures in a form A–B–C–B–A–coda. The ballade opens with a lengthy introduction marked dolce and the first theme has both song-like and dance-like components. The A theme of the introduction is thematically unrelated to a majority of the piece but is repeated at the close of the work. Following the introduction, Chopin introduces a second (B) theme in a section with the performance direction mezza voce; this theme consists of repeated Cs in two broken octaves in the right hand, but soon develops into a develops into a furious chordal section and once again returns to its original form.  This is followed by a new theme (C) consisting of right hand sixteenth-note leggiero runs.  The B theme returns again and the work closes with the original theme.   The performance here is by Canadian pianist Danielle Marcinek whom I had the pleasure of hearing twice live in Vancouver British Columbia on  a visit there.

We will close this hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating the chamber music of Frèdèric Chopin with his Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 65.  This work was written in 1846. It is one of only nine works of Chopin published during his lifetime that were written for instruments other than piano (although the piano still appears in every work he wrote). The cello sonata was the last of Chopin's works to be published in his lifetime.  The work received its premiere performance Auguste Franchomme, cello with Chopin at the piano in February of 1848 at Chopin’s last public performance. The work is in 4 movements: Allegro moderato; Scherzo; Largo and Finale. Allegro

We are opening this second hour celebrating the chamber music of Frèdèric Chopin on Four Centuries of Great music with Chopin’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 8. This composition is for the standard piano trio of piano, violin and cello and was written in 1828 or 1829, and published in 1829.  It is the only work by Chopin that features the violin (excluding orchestral parts).  It was an instrument to which he was somewhat indifferent, as reflected in the relative lack of sophistication of the violin parts.  In a letter to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski dated August 31, 1830, Chopin speculates whether he should have written the violin line for viola, believing that the viola's timbre would "accord better with the cello".   However pianist Emanuel Ax is of the opinion that it is perhaps fortunate that Chopin scored the work for a standard piano trio, since so few trios with viola exist.  It is in 4 movements: Allegro con fuoco;  Scherzo – Vivace;  Adagio sostenuto and  Finale – Allegretto.            Frèdèric Chopin: 

Next we have two nocturnes: Nocturne No_ 7 in C sharp minor op. 27 no. 1 and Nocturne No 8 in D flat major op. 27 no. 2. Both were composed in 1836 and published in 1837.  Chopin’s nocturnes are generally considered among the finest short solo works for the instrument and hold an important place in contemporary concert repertoire.   Although Chopin did not invent the nocturne, he popularized and expanded on it, building on the form developed by Irish composer John Field through a total of 21 nocturnes for solo piano between 1827 and 1846.

We are closing today’s celebration of the chamber music of Frèdèric Chopin on Four Centuries of Great Music with his Scherzo #3.            The third scherzo written in1839 belong to a visionary and unsettled period in the composer’s life.  He had just broken up with his partner the writer George Sand. Right from the introduction to the third Scherzo, a feeling of anguish hangs within a void of rhythmic and tonal ambiguity. When the first theme bursts in with its pounding, rhythmic energy, it feels like it stems from a keen desire to prepare us for a more sublime vision. This vision appears in the second section, in the form of a serious and solemn chorale motif with religious undertones, initially aspiring to liberation and light. Gradually, however, this motif is swallowed up by the frenetic first theme, while the development of the second theme leads the chorale melody into a tempo that radiates calm and brightness.