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How I got into #3: The middle section of the third movement.

That did it for me. I was sold.

-J

No...

I think they should just be given 'B' numbers like many of his other works that are known yet unpublished.

The B minor sonata wins in my book. It's my favorite piano sonata of all time. I think it's better than the opus 35 because Chopin wrote it specifically to address the criticisms of the opus 35. Also, being opus 58, was written much later and is much more mature and colorful than opus 35. With Chopin, late is better than early IMO. I'd say Chopin really started making the transition around his mid 40's opus numbers.

Op. 35 is one of the most amazing individual achievements in music. It's still broadly misunderstood, though, due in large part to poor performance practice. All four movements are intertwined and have interrelations in material, and Chopin's detail work in accenting, dynamics, and phrasing helps to bring it out in performance.

Unfortunately, my own performance suffered from some severe distraction in the form of a piano that was ear-foldingly out of tune. I had some pretty bad memory slips because I just couldn't stand to listen and concentrate.

Quite agree with Jeffrey

Chopin left us 3 dinkum Sonatas ...
op. 4, op.35, op. 58

Perhaps we should highlight the Opus 35
including the famous sepulchral Marche Funebre .

Must have another bash at the doleful ditty.

Anybody ready to depart this “mortal coil”?

What? No takers?

At least, Op. 35 and 58 are the most complete and fully-realized sonatas of the Romantic era, along with the Liszt. Brahms' are youthfully exuberant but a little messy, and Schumann's.. the writing is amazing, but the straitjacket of sonata form feels uncomfortable to him. After you've gotten used to Schumann's thought process, the sonatas feel a little like he forced himself to write them in a traditional format, but he would rather have taken different digressions if he could. Speaking of which, I'm digressing quite a lot right now.

I think the sonata's appearance on the printed page is more interesting than listening to it.

The other two masterpieces, I've always preferred the Op 35. The sheer audacity, radicalism and blazing inspiration of the writing never fail to stir me. As for the Op 58, perhaps heretical of me, but I could cheerfully live without the repeat in the first movement, which, in any case, could be there more as a matter of convention.

No worries, hardly heretical. Few people play the repeat. I love the piece, I love the first movement, but would never think of playing the repeat, and wouldn't want to hear it. BTW I'm with that view of why it's there.

And by the way - we should all agree that in Op. 35, observe all repeats and in the first movement exposition, repeat back to bar 1.

Agreed! So sayeth the gospel of Rosen.

I just don't get it...

IMO repeating all the way back to the Grave destroys all the momentum generated in the exposition. And how is Rosen so sure of himself?

The momentum already comes to a stop and a turning point with the fortissimo, E-flat diminished chord. The problem is that if you take the repeat back to the Doppio movemento, it invalidates the Grave passage as part of the exposition, which is absolutely is.

Besides that, there is evidence to show that there should be no double bar at all after the Grave, much less a repeat, and it's merely an engraver's error in the Leipzig edition.

I don't think I hear the opening being repeated. But it's certainly more valid than repeating the introduction to Beethoven's op.13, which I've heard discussed as well.


-J

I'm with you, 100%, and I'm sure of it.


He wasn't, even if he thought he was. People should never be sure of things.

I've never heard or seen anything about the repeat being there. Can someone expand on this concept? I don't think I like the idea of repeating from bar 1, but would still like to know about this sentiment.

Current research and thinking is that the repeat in the first movement of Op.35 should start from the Grave, and that that's what Chopin intended.

More pianists than ever are doing the repeat this way, and others (like Pollini and Uchida) have switched to this from what they used to do before, repeating from the Doppio movimento.

But those of us of a certain age are so used to hearing the repeat from the Doppio movimento, that it just sounds plain odd to hear the repeat done another way - even if it's the right way.....

Not much of an "expansion"!

I've seen some of the 'expansions' and don't remember them except that I wasn't at all persuaded. I thought they were just opinions, and that they didn't withstand the "ear test."


Edit: OK, what the hey, I gave this the additional attention that it deserves, i.e. very little.

Here's a webpage (of pianist Jonathan Oshry) that gives one of the "expansions," citing the aforementioned Mr. Rosen:
The relevant excerpt:

Charles Rosen raises an important issue with regard to the introductory four bars of the first movement of opus 35. He notes that a glance at the autograph in Warsaw shows that the repeat markings in almost every edition appear in the wrong place - bar 5 instead of bar 1.[190] This, according to him, makes "awkward nonsense of an important moment in the opening movement."[191] He believes that the repeat is clearly intended to begin with the first note of the movement, or else the harmonic change between the cadence in D flat major at the end of the exposition and the beginning of the accompaniment figure in bar 5 makes no sense. Thus the opening four bars serve a double function: they are a dramatic beginning, and a transition from the end of the exposition back to the tonic.[192]


Here's the problem: Even granting that this isn't a direct quote from Rosen but a paraphrase, but assuming that it's a pretty faithful one, which it seems to be....the "makes no sense" thing is clearly just an opinion, not a historical or musicological fact, and in fact to me it's ridiculous. The "harmonic change" has always made sense to me, and indeed I find it absolutely wonderful. In order to start entertaining the idea that editors had the repeat sign in the wrong place forever, you have to start with being bothered by the traditional thing. I never have been, and I think it's not nearly as effective Rosen's way.

So, there is a lot of inference here, but not a lot of proof. He just "feels" like it's in the wrong place then? I mean, I'm all for a re-evaluation of things like this, but where is the evidence other than him saying that they are in the "wrong place?" Thanks for the expansion too, Mark.

Anyways, is there a performance on Youtube utilizing the bar 1 repeat? I'd still love to hear it.

(See my additional edit -- I fleshed it out more.)

Rosen's evidence derives from the French and English first editions (not a "Warsaw autograph," which does not exist; no autograph of the complete Sonata exists).

I invite you all to look here:

Chopin First Editions Online

Make your way to op. 35, and look at the first pages of the French and English editions. (The site doesn't let me link you directly to the pages, so you'll have to do this yourself. Even if you get lost, you'll have fun: Chopin first editions!)

Imagine yourself a pianist in London or Paris in the 1840s, taking the exposition repeat. You look at the first page. No double bar, no repeat dots under "Doppio movimento". Just a regular, single barline. Presumably many (most? all?) pianists would go back to the start of the movement, as the default location for the beginning of a repeat in the absence of a double bar with repeat dots earlier.

(There's good reason to suppose that the French and English editions reflect the reading of the now-lost autograph. The German edition does have the double bar and repeat dots at the "doppio movimento," but this reflects a manuscript in the hand of a copyist [probably Adolf Gutmann] - and importantly, that manuscript just has the double bars. So the repeat dots were added by the German publisher, and one might suppose that Gutmann added the double bar, to reflect the tempo change - but maybe not the location of the beginning of the repeat.)

So the textual evidence for the repeat going back to the Grave seems pretty clear. Rosen wasn't just going on "feeling."

All that said, if a pianist doesn't believe in the musical sense of the repeat going back to the "Grave," I'd much prefer to hear her or him go to the "doppio movimento" (or just skip it all together): I want to be convinced by a performance, not hear simple allegiance to a text.

Jeff Kallberg