CHOPIN: FOUR BALLADES ANDANTE

When the first of the four Ballades was sketched, in the autumn of 1831 at Stuttgart, the twentyish and quite unknown Chopin was en route from Warsaw to Paris, where he was quickly to become the pale darling of the salons. When the last of the Ballades was published, in 1843, he had already forsaken the drawing room for the sickbed. Those dozen years thus virtually define his career as a composer, and it is defensible to say that the Ballades, which appeared at intervals over that period, succinctly define the length and breadth of his enduring artistic achievement – each in its way is a fair sample of a style so original, so unmistakable, that it must be accounted among the very few truly unique dialects in the universal language.

-- James Lyons, From the original liner notes for LSC-2304

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The quality of the piano playing is very substantial indeed. The dramatic turns in the Ballades are electrifying and the characteristic rhythms of the Polonaise are propelled irresistibly.

Whether the Chopin Ballades really illustrate the series of Lithuanian epics related on this record's sleeve-note is doubtful; it would be romantically agreeable if they did. More certainly they turn rapidly and romantically from one emotion, Lithuanian or no, to another. These turns of emotion are projected vividly by Graffman: piu mosso, says Chopin, and he is off like a whirlwind; presto con fuoco, and he is out of sight over the horizon. The effect is often electrifying, although the contrasting poetical moments—on the whole, in these pieces, the more numerous—are not quite so convincingly handled: repose seems less successfully conveyed than activity, poetry less successfully than drama. Yet of course the quality of the piano playing as such is very substantial indeed. It comes into its own in the Grande Polonaise.

Here the characteristic rhythms are propelled irresistibly, with a surge which must nearly convince the listener that the piece is not three times too long after all; the relatively peaceful Andante Spianato helps here, too.

-- Gramophone [6/1966, reviewing these performances on LP]