The Piano Ballade – Part I

About the event

Experience two extraordinary concerts that bring the piano ballade to life in all its variety! At the centre stands Fryderyk Chopin, regarded as the founder of this fascinating genre, who made music history with his works.

Alongside his masterpieces, numerous ballades by later composers will be heard, showing how vibrant and adaptable this form has remained to this day. In total, 11 professional members of the Chopin Society present an impressive 23 ballades – a musical panorama full of emotion, drama and poetry.

Over the more than 900 years since its origin, the ballade has undergone an extraordinary and by no means straightforward development. Originally a simple, popular dance song from Occitania in southern France, it evolved during the age of the troubadours into an art poem and art song, recited or sung to instrumental accompaniment.

After a 300-year slumber, it was revived towards the end of the 18th century, initially as a purely literary form: ballades were poems telling a dramatic story (e.g. Goethe, Erlkönig, 1782). This verse form inspired composers of the early and high Romantic era to set it to music, mostly with piano accompaniment (e.g. Schubert, Erlkönig, 1815).

With his four piano ballades, Fryderyk Chopin took a wholly new path, creating the genre of the purely instrumental ballade, which, detached from literary models, tells its own “story” entirely in the language of music. Other composers took up this approach and followed. The two concert evenings of our Ballade Festival, jointly devised by the Society's professional pianists, illustrate through celebrated examples of piano ballade literature the development this genre has undergone from Chopin to the 20th century, with works from Poland, Germany, Norway, France, Spain and the United States of America. (TN)