Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Chopin -Ballade No 1 in G Minor, Op 23

Thanks! I found a slightly niftier one though...

https://en.schott-music.com/shop/pieces-ii-no376139.html

... and done! Eight days, they reckon.

So that's our Christmas presents to ourselves sorted.

I can't wait to get started on these pieces. I phoned James Rhodes and he said that if I buy myself a Casio VL-ltone for five pounds and put in a solid 45 seconds of practise a day for three days, I can perform these to Russian supermodels at parties.

Thought the cat head keyboard was quite cute in the video linked above.


Thanks for that tip! I'll be doing unbelievably if I can even play this to my Russian wife 7 years from now

You guys are just evil

New rule! Nobody’s allowed to post any links to Chopin/Rachmaninov while I’m trying to be good to my stiff, out-of-practice hands and play Bach and Mozart!


P.S. To think I used to own all of these... sigh

I remember the fun I got from listening to Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev piano concertos using the score when they were WAY beyond me. You don't have to be able to play something to use the score profitably.

With apologies to Sybille!

Best get a book with them all in! I've just listened to them again:

and the only one I have any trouble getting to grips with (in terms of listening to it) is no4.
No 2 has a nice approachable tune, but I'm not really a fan of it in it's entirety, and no3 also has the same but is, well, it kind of makes me smile and really enjoy it. Number 4, as I say, I find a bit disturbing and need to listen to it more often. Having the music, though, means that I can happily pick out the parts that are playable without much effort, follow when somebody else plays and perhaps aspire to trying the rest at a later stage. I never regretted buying my copy.

That's interesting. #4 was the first one that stabbed me through the heart. The theme is one of my favorite things in Western music. I play it occasionally (just the first theme, and poorly at that) just to hear it. The end of this piece can be difficult if one is not used to hearing Chopin's moods, and this mood is particularly ... I don't want to say dark but rather complicated? Anyway, Zimerman's versions of these remain my favorites, though the Novaes versions (thanks to Mark_C in PC for this reference) are lovely as well.

Jandz - thanks. I'll have another listen to No4. The others I've heard before, but while I listened to no4 there was too much going on in the background around me so I struggled with the volume.

Oh, this is so true. You've hit the nail on the head. And yes, the internet is one heck of an enabler. But I don't mind.

Glad to see the "Zimerman chandelier clip" as I call it, is the one being cited for the Chopin Ballades. It has for a fair while now been much my favourite performance of these.

As always with Zimerman, perfection, apart from the out of tune humming.

I thought the out of tune humming was a Gould thing. Does Zimerman do it too? I've never noticed if that's the case. Or do I have it backwards...?

Well, tbh I just looked around the internet and the Zimerman version of No1 was the one I liked best - it really is rather wonderful. Found the video I linked and just sat through it - couldn't resist. Number 4, as I said, isn't one a I know at all so I'll be going back to that and looking through the sheet music when I find it. The 'chandelier dip,' though, such a nice description!

He isn't quite as bad as Gould, I think for humming but it is noticeable in a lot of his recordings (albeit faintly) - not so much in the chandelier clip. But enough so that when you notice it, you notice it, if you see what I mean.

He more than makes up for it though with the supreme standard of playing.

If you haven't checked it out yet, search for Beethoven 5th piano concerto with Zimerman and Bernstein conducting with the Vienna philharmonic.

Also, search for "Krystian Zimerman - Chopin and Schubert" which is the longer clip from which the four ballades are lifted. Also, on this longer clip, he plays a Scherzo, a Nocturne, Fantaisie in F minor and Barcerolle. With Schubert impromptus chucked in at the end (although I prefer Brendel and Uchida etc for Schubert).

Also, as far as number four is concerned, it's not as "immediate" as the other Ballades. It's more of a journey. Give it a few more listens.

I am also a massive fan of number two, a slightly "angrier" Ballade, maybe not as deep as the other three, but I think underrated.

Enjoy!

Reddit's r/piano subreddit and the Discord Pinano Server are currently hosting a classical piano competition. One of the Reddit members, u/veviurka (also known as u/NPhardness), a computer programmer & pianist in real life, has posted her first draft submission of her competition program performed from memory, including from 10:22 - 19:21: Ballade No. 1.

She does make a mistake at 17:36, but she recovers and finishes the piece before moving on to finish with two Chopin études. (Her first draft, after all - competition rules are the actual submitted video entered into the competition must be of all pieces played through and recorded in one unbroken take, so u/veviurka is planning on 2 more takes before entering one of these into the competition - hopefully it will be one with an unblemished Ballade!)

Posting this here since this is highly relevant to this thread about people playing Ballade No. 1

There will be a number of other competition submissions as it seems there is some excitement about this on r/piano and Discord Pinano, but hers might be the only Ballade No. 1 submitted.

So to answer some of the proposed questions, and responses to my post, i only practice on weekends, with stretches of 3 hours .
During the weekdays it is tougher for me because of work and what not and travel to and from.I usually have 12-13 hour days.

But i have to say, i hope to figure out a way to develop enough to learn this piece.

It really is perhaps my favorite classical piece.

And just a pointer from here to another thread about an encounter in which this book Zaphod encouraged me to get played a role...

The OP is long gone but nobody mentioned the Henle Difficulty Level which I find to be a good metric of relative difficulty.

The Henle scale goes from 1-9. 1-easy. 9-very difficult.

5 - Clair de Lune (medium, not for beginners)
8 - Chopin Ballade in g minor (difficult)
9 - Chopin Ballade in f minor (very difficult)

The OP is still around and last posted to this thread 3 days ago, just 2 messages above yours.

Tyrone Slothrop, thanks for mentioning my recording . I've issues with perfecting this Ballade to the stage with truly 0 mistakes, so my competition entry will not be perfect as well. I don't feel ashamed of that, especially if the recording has to be taken in one shot. After yesterday's new recording I felt truly depressed, because it's not fault free again. After that I listened to Trifonov on Rubinstain competition and realized that he actually doesn't play Chopin Etudes op 25 perfectly. It makes me more at ease, because for discord competition the recording is supposed to be in more "live-performance" fashion than studio recording.

Regarding discord competition, playing hard pieces is not required there, I play Ballade by my choice to challenge myself. At the beginning I was thinking about Ballade F Minor, but I didn't perform it for last years, so I decided that one month is not enough to relearn it and polish it up.

Hi vervurka! It's definitely an impressive piece and being fault free should probably more an aspiration than a realistic goal . I bought myself a Henle with the Ballades and found the Coda to be terrifying to look at.


Did you post any of your subsequent recordings? I've checked your Twitch page and only see that first one from the 14th.

I will post it later on Twitch and youtube. The deadline for competition is extended by 5 days, so I'm thinking about having another shot. By the way feel free to visit my streams, you can request live performance of Ballade and other nice pieces, I also can elaborate on piano questions from chat. Sorry for advertising it, but I believe advertising the concept of streaming live classical music online is important and I try to encourage more people to do that, so we have bigger community there.