LDV14

19 The Second Ballade is a disconcerting work . . . It’s the most enigmatic of the four, with such abrupt changes of mood; it expresses a form of schizophrenia. Chopin dedicated the Second Ballade to Schumann. It’s impossible to say if one should establish a connection between its content and tone, which correspond to the German composer’s psychology, and the image Chopin may have had of him. The Ballade in F major has an aspect I would call almost pathological. The work begins with a long introduction, an extraordinary, obsessional episode, somewhat morbid in its hypnotic swaying motion and the way it dwells on idées fixes . Suddenly, the second theme rushes in with extreme violence. At this point, hammered out in this way, it’s something absolutely astonishing in Chopin. And then there’s also the cataclysmic coda, which conveys an unprecedented sense of despair absent from the coda of the Ballade in Gminor; there too there is despair, it’s true, but combined with an extremely combative, vindictive feeling. Fromstart to finish, the coda of the Second Ballade is a screamof pain, before it eventually closes in silence, on the edge of the abyss. PHILIPPE BIANCONI