Its opening idea, which brings to a halt the frenetic energy of the preceding scherzo, is serious, but it is the seriousness of a love song. The lengthy trio, in A major, is lacking entirely the somber atmosphere that pervades much of Chopin's music. Among these are the vast contrasts in the first theme, with its wide leaps and pregnant pauses in the first half and rising and falling scales in the second. The problem with this is that our familiarity with the work can lead us to miss its many great moments. In a way, Chopin has ultimately gotten his wish, because the piece has been played to death.
Chopin wished his students to perform the opening phrase of this scherzo in a manner that evoked the image of a mortuary. It is the most popular of Chopin's scherzos. This type of composition stood in the face of "Germanic" works of the time, which are constructed with the principle of "thematic unity" in mind.Ĭhopin's Scherzo in B flat minor/D flat major was published in Leipzig in the same year it was composed. Furthermore, the reprise is not always given in full, but leads to a coda that features new material.
By delaying the reprise and pushing toward the end of the piece Chopin increases the dramatic power of its arrival. 39, is in a modified sonata form.) A great extension and harmonic foray into distant keys create tension that is resolved with the reprise of the opening material. (The third of the four independent scherzos, Op. 20, 31 and 54 scherzos, Chopin achieves his dramatic effect through the ternary form. For Chopin, the scherzo form (ABA, or ternary) was indeed a skeleton, just as ternary form was for all of his dance music, and he embellished upon this skeleton as he saw fit. However, in Chopin's more mature scherzos all that seems to be left of these models is the 3/4 meter. The best known scherzos before Chopin are those by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and these undoubtedly served Chopin as models. 35, and the sixth as part of the Sonata, Op.
If the double concerto sometimes seems a bit rhythmically effortful and texturally congested, the performances of the two chamber works (Pashchenko plays the quintet, Lubimov the Notturno) are airy and athletic, making the best possible case for Dussek’s appealing music, with its roots in 18th-century classicism, but with occasional anticipations of the Romanticism to come.Chopin composed six scherzos, four of which were published as individual works, the fifth as part of the Sonata, Op. The two pianists play modern copies of instruments made towards the end of the 18th century by Anton Walter in Vienna and Longman/Clementi in London. This week’s other picksįortepianos are very much in evidence in Alexei Lubimov and Olga Pashchenko’s disc of music by Jan Ladislav Dussek for Alpha, his Concerto for two pianos Op 63 and the Piano Quintet Op 41 and Notturno Concertant for violin, horn and piano, with the Finnish Baroque Orchestra and members of the quartet Meta4. These pianos, says Huvé: “Force upon us a more exploratory style of playing and less comfortable listening, an understanding of Chopin as more classical in his composition, but more violent in his expression.” And that’s without the frisson of hearing this music not only performed on the instruments for which it was conceived, but in the case of the later pieces, on an instrument that Chopin almost certainly played himself. The contrast between the lean, more percussive sound of the Pleyel and the fuller, richer sonority of the Érard is marked, and not everything in Huvé’s uncompromising performances will settle easily on ears more used to the well-upholstered sound of modern instruments. For the remaining pieces, which date from 1839 to 1842, he switches to a piano from the other leading French maker of the time, Érard, an instrument made in 1838 that Chopin is known to have selected for one of his pupils. Reissued now, it seems to me an important and utterly fascinating disc.įor the first two Scherzos and first two Ballades, composed between 18, Huvé uses a Pleyel from 1828, thought to be the oldest surviving piano made by the company and identical to the one that Chopin played during his early years in Paris. When it was released on Erato the following year, though, Huvé’s disc seems to have attracted surprisingly little attention, despite the extraordinary significance of the two meticulously restored 19th-century instruments on which it is performed. E ven now, performances of the masterpieces of the 19th-century piano repertoire on keyboards of the composer’s time are not exactly commonplace, and when Cyril Huvé made his recordings of Chopin’s four Scherzos and four Ballades in 1991, they would have been much rarer still.