BaL 29.06.24 - Chopin: Ballades

[Pulcinella]

3.00 pm
Building a Library

Kenneth Hamilton chooses his favourite recording of Chopin's four Ballades.

Frédéric Chopin's four Ballades, composed between 1831 and 1842, are some of the most important and challenging pieces in the piano repertoire. Said to be inspired by his poet friend Adam Mickiewicz, Chopin used the term ballade in the sense of a balletic interlude or dance piece, with dramatic and dance-like elements. Chopin's Ballades directly influenced composers such as Liszt and Brahms, who subsequently wrote ballades of their own.

Link to the Presto site listing of recordings containing all four:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/works/41377--chopin-ballades-nos-1-4/browse

There are of course many more versions of individual ballades (514 entries for Number 1, for example!).

All four feature on a BBC MM CD: Volume 5, Number 9. Played by Tamás Vásáry on 25 November 1993 in the Concert Hall, BBC Broadcasting House, London.

Kenneth's choice:

Krystian Zimerman (piano)
DG E4230902

[richardfinegold]

I’ve been listening to the Preludes, Nocturnes and Etudes recently, but haven’t spun the Ballades for a while. Rubinstein was always my ideal here, combining a perfect sense of poetry and drama and a recording that still sounds fresh after six decades

[Pianoman]

Perahia and Zimerman for me here, but a smattering of the individual ballades from other pianists in and among.

[smittims]

Chopin's music is famously open to many different but equally valid interpretations, so I'd imagine it's impossible to choose one' best' version. My own all-time favourite, to which I return repeatedly as if it were one of my eight desert-island discs, is Alfred Cortot's 1929 set recorded at the Small Queen's Hall.

The room had a lovely acoustic, and Cortot's interpretation is fresher and more spontaneous than his better-known Abbey Road set recorded a few years later. The opening of the second Ballade is for me a highlight in Chopin interpretation. He seems to play every pair of bars in a slighltly different way. He was at the time prized for the spiritual quality of his playing, and I think one advantage he had over today's pianists is that when he went to Paris in the 1890s to begin his career it was till a horse-drawn, gaslit city and there were still men around who remembered the composer, including one of his own teachers. Such contniuity is beyond price.

After Cortot I've found Malcuzynski and Samson Francois most satisfying. Rubinstein and , for me , Moiseiwitsch, cannot be ignored. I first heard the Ballades (1 and 3) on two 78s of theirs. It was my introduction to the unique world of the solo piano repertoire, in many ways the ideal record listening , one player playing to one listener.

[CallMePaul]

I have Ashkenazy and Kempf and one or two on Pollini recital discs. A quick browse at the Presto listings leads me to consider Andsnes, not a pianist I associate with Chopin.

[vinteuil]

for performances on 'modern' piano I like Zimerman and Pollini.

But it's good that we can do a 'vertical tasting' on pianos of the period -

1836 Pleyel : Arthur Schoonderwoerd
1837 Érard : Alexei Lubimov
1845 Pleyel : Yuang Sheng
1848 Pleyel : Nelson Goerner
.

[Roger Webb]

I have Ashkenazy's complete survey on CD which I dip into occasionally, and a few single discs, one of my favourites being Perahia on SK64399 which has a tremendous account of the four Ballades, together with a selection of Etudes, Mazurkas and Waltzes.

BTW, the earlier (1964) of the Ashkenazy Ballades produced by Culshaw and engineered by Gordon Parry were re-issued on a Decca Legends, the remastering very successful, but I prefer the piano sound on the later '78-'85 recordings in the above box by John Dunkerley.

[Wolfram]

Perahia and Zimerman for me here, but a smattering of the individual ballades from other pianists in and among.

Zimerman definitely, but I’ve never warmed to Perahia’s Ballades: too literal and straight for my taste. But for sheer fantasy and ‘let me tell you story’ imagination Emanuel Ax takes some beating.

I am ashamed to say that I’ve never heard Rubinstein’s recording of all the Ballades.

[richardfinegold]

Chopin's music is famously open to many different but equally valid interpretations, so I'd imagine it's impossible to choose one' best' version. My own all-time favourite, to which I return repeatedly as if it were one of my eight desert-island discs, is Alfred Cortot's 1929 set recorded at the Small Queen's Hall.

The room had a lovely acoustic, and Cortot's interpretation is fresher and more spontaneous than his better-known Abbey Road set recorded a few years later. The opening of the second Ballade is for me a highlight in Chopin interpretation. He seems to play every pair of bars in a slighltly different way. He was at the time prized for the spiritual quality of his playing, and I think one advantage he had over today's pianists is that when he went to Paris in the 1890s to begin his career it was till a horse-drawn, gaslit city and there were still men around who remembered the composer, including one of his own teachers. Such contniuity is beyond price.

After Cortot I've found Malcuzynski and Samson Francois most satisfying. Rubinstein and , for me , Moiseiwitsch, cannot be ignored. I first heard the Ballades (1 and 3) on two 78s of theirs. It was my introduction to the unique world of the solo piano repertoire, in many ways the ideal record listening , one player playing to one listener.

Actually, per Wiki, by the early 1890s, Paris was largely electrified. Remember that it was considered the most technologically advanced metropolis and sponsored numerous exhibitions to advertise that, including the one that commissioned the Eiffel Tower.
More to the point, I just played Cortot in the First Ballade, and listening to him struggle with the notes in the buildup to to main theme the piece is painful. It reminds me of my own struggles with playing Chopin and I think is shockingly bad for a Pianist with such a reputation

[CallMePaul]

for performances on 'modern' piano I like Zimerman and Pollini.

But it's good that we can do a 'vertical tasting' on pianos of the period -

1836 Pleyel : Arthur Schoonderwoerd
1837 Érard : Alexei Lubimov
1845 Pleyel : Yuang Sheng
1848 Pleyel : Nelson Goerner
.

I will try to hear some of these - Lubimov and Goerner seem particularly inviting. Chopin generally preferred Pleyel instruments and gave many concerts in the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

[gurnemanz]

1848 Pleyel : Nelson Goerner

Nelson Goerner (NIFC 2005) is definitely is one of my favourites. It won a Diapason D'or: http://www.diapasonmag.fr/a-la-une/u...rner-8757.html
Although they have different opus numbers, interestingly, of all the recordings of all the Ballades which I have the Goerner is the only one which does not include them in consecutive order on the disc - they are interspersed with three Nocturnes.

For many years I only had (and seemed to need) Rubinstein. In the CD era I have acquired a number of very good recordings from a range of recording dates. Most of them (including Goerner) are on boxes or collections - all except Casadesus and Kissin.

Robert Casadesus Columbia 1950
Artur Rubinstein RCA 1959
Vlado Perlemuter Nimbus 1974
Abbey Simon Vox 1980 (download)
Vladimir Ashkenazy Decca 1983
Andrei Gavrilov DG 1992
Evgeny Kissin RCA 1999
Cédric Tiberghien Harmonia Mundi 2006

[Barbirollians]

Zimerman definitely, but I’ve never warmed to Perahia’s Ballades: too literal and straight for my taste. But for sheer fantasy and ‘let me tell you story’ imagination Emanuel Ax takes some beating.

I am ashamed to say that I’ve never heard Rubinstein’s recording of all the Ballades.

Clearly Wolfram should be expelled after such a confession !

joking apart the stereo Rubinstein set still does it for me . I don’t find Perahia straight or literal though !

[Opinionated Knowall]

I don’t find Perahia straight or literal though !

Nor me! But I just pulled Samson Francois's Chopin box off the shelf and gave the Ballades (and Scherzos) a spin. Wow! Maybe not a library choice, but the colour, spontaneity, variety of touch, understanding of counterpoint and sheer story-telling power are all really compelling. If pianists fall into one of two camps, like great comedians, either polished raconteurs like Peter Ustinov or Kenneth Williams, or inspired improvisers like Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard, then Francois is emphatically in the the latter camp.

[Darloboy]

We seem to be going through a repeat of 2012-2013 on BaL at the moment. Such unimaginative programming.

Previous BaL recommendations:
David Owen Norris (Dec 98): Zimerman
Jessica Duchen (Nov 13): Zimerman again

[Wolfram]

Clearly Wolfram should be expelled after such a confession !

joking apart the stereo Rubinstein set still does it for me . I don’t find Perahia straight or literal though !

I have heard Rubinstein now, curtesy of streaming on the Naim Qb. Can I sue for readmittance? Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to describe Perahia’s approach as Classical or restrained rather than literal, as apposed to the unbridled Romanticism of Zimerman or Ax. You can’t fault Perahia’s playing, but I miss the romance that others find. Perahia’s speeds are quite fast in comparison to Zimerman, Ax and Rubinstein. These are among some of my favourite Chopin, and I have been so contented with Zimerman and Ax that I haven’t bothered to look elsewhere or even to keep up to date with their evolving discography. I am looking forward to this BaL and I hope it throws up some new and interesting alternatives.

I have ordered a cd copy of the Rubinstein set from eBay. He isn’t bad?