Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
Ballade No. 1 in G minor Op. 23

The term ballad(e) first came into use historically a sa French poem-song commonly played by early minstrels throughout England and Europe. Originally, the pieces were intended to be sung or danced to. During the Romantic Period they evolved into solo instrumental works, most often for the piano. Frederic Chopin adopted the term under his compositional genius and wrote four Ballades between 1831 and 1842. Each is a particularly singular work, distinctly separate from the other three, all containing difficult and technical challenges.  At the time, the pieces were considered to be somewhat of a novelty; no other composer had ever used the term to describe music for solo piano.   
       
The No. 1 in G minor was completed in 1835 and grew from sketches Chopin made while residing in Vienna in 1831. The main sections of the work are composed around two themes: the first in G minor includes passages of remarkable musical complexities. The second theme in E flat major, is again followed by dramatic technical development. Chopin concludes the piece with a rousing Presto—rapid scales that signal the end of the Ballade followed by energized octaves and final forte chords.

The Ballade in G Minor is among Chopin’s most popular works; its elegance, melodic abundance and technical mastery make in nothing less than a stunning showpiece. On one occasion, after Robert Schumann heard the Chopin Ballade played by the composer in Leipzig, his comment was simple and to the point: “I have heard a new Ballade by Chopin. It seems to me to be the work of his genius. I have told him it is my favourite of all his works.”


Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Piano Concerto in A minor 

One of the most popular of all piano concertos was composed by Edvard Grieg in 1868.   It is among the earliest of his important works and the only piano concerto he finished. It was an ambitious undertaking that provides ample evidence of Grieg’s love of Norwegian folk melodies; his music is respected and recognized through an embodiment of the land and its people.            

Music analysts have long claimed that the A minor concerto’s genesis was Grieg’s having heard a performance of Robert Schumann’s A minor concerto played by Clara Schumann. James Keller, music critic with the San Francisco Symphony, comments, “It is perfectly normal for audience members hearing Grieg’s Piano Concerto to remark on how very much it reminds them of Schumann’s Piano Concerto—in both cases in the key of A minor, in both cases representing the composer’s only full-fledged entry in the genre.”            

‍It would be irresponsible, however, to suggest that Grieg’s concerto is simply an imitation of Schumann’s. The Grieg concerto has individual qualities pointing directly at the composer’s originality; it exhibits the distinctiveness of his own voice. Nowhere in the entire concerto is this more evident than in the folk-inflected finale, a movement greatly admired by both Liszt and Tchaikovsky.        

A note of interest: Grieg’s A minor concerto was the first piano concerto ever recorded. It was engineered in 1909 by German pianist Wilhelm Backhaus, but because of the limited technology of the time it was heavily abridged; the entire concerto ran just six minutes.


Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Moment Musicaux Opus 16

The story of Sergei Rachmaninov’s career as pianist, conductor and composer is somewhat unusual. He lived his life over the border of two centuries. Considered to be the last of the great Russian Romantic composers, his compositional style was locked into the 19thCentury. But as the impending 20th Century loomed he began witnessing monumental changes in music, changes he was not inclined to embrace. Referring to his contemporaries, including such luminaries as Glazunov and Jean Sibelius, he remarked to music critic Leonard Liebling:

“I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing, and I cannot acquire the new. I have made intense efforts to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. Unlike Madame Butterfly with her quick religious conversion, I cannot cast out my musical gods in a moment and bend the knee to new ones.”

‍This disinclination toward the new had its consequences.

In the fall of 1896, the twenty-three year old Rachmaninov found himself in dire monetary circumstances. He had recently been robbed of his finances during a train trip and was under the added pressure of the demand for a promised symphony. To a fellow composer he wrote, "I hurry in order to get money I need by a certain date ... This perpetual financial pressure is, on the one hand, quite beneficial as by the 20th of this month I have to write six piano pieces."

‍The happy result of this unfortunate situation was the Moments Musicaux, Op.16,composed between October and December of that year—an impressive output for such a short time period. Despite the seemingly hasty production, the six pieces that make up Moments Musicaux are anything but insubstantial. Had the composer been able to write within a less constraining atmosphere he could not have surpassed the sheer musicality of these masterworks. Each displays an individual form requiring considerable virtuosity, distinctly different levels of complexity, and unequalled melodic beauty, certainly in keeping with the composer’s firmly planted romantic roots.


Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor

On Christmas Eve, 1874, Tchaikovsky’s close friend, pianist Nicholas Rubinstein, played the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Rubinstein’s reaction to the piece was nothing less than frigid. At its conclusion Tchaikovsky recalled, “a torrent of words from Rubinstein, ‘your concerto is utterly worthless, absolutely unplayable, passages are commonplace and awkward’”—harsh criticism for what would soon become one of the best-known, best loved and most often performed masterworks in the entire classical repertoire. At its formal premiere in the United States, Boston in1875, it was a monumental success and has remained so ever since.            

The work follows the traditional pattern of three movements. The first, marked Allegro non Troppo e Molto Maestoso, opens and introduces the movement’s initial theme. Part of its development Tchaikovsky said he had heard sung by a blind beggar in the Ukrainian folk song, The Song of the Blind. It is unmistakably one of Tchaikovsky’s most recognized and best-loved melodies.      

Movement two, Andantino Semplice, follows Tchaikovsky’s frequent habit of “borrowing quotes”. This one, in the middle section, is from the French melody Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire, (One Must Have Fun, Dance and Laugh).            

The final third rondo movement is marked Allegro con fuoco. Complete with enthusiastic Russian folk melodies it is an incomparable romp between piano and orchestra. As one critic put it:  “a miracle of thematic invention and orchestral technique”, virtuosity that brings the concerto to a dazzling ending.            

Among all the piano concertos written before or after, the work has gained a popularity beyond comparison. It is estimated today that one could not identify any orchestra world-wide that has not had, more than once, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 on its play list.