Chopin: Ballade No 1 in G minor

Frédéric Chopin was certainly a person in frail health. So, because of the sort of agreement she had with him, mom Wodzinsky decided to learn a little more about Frédéric before giving her girl Maria away for marriage. What she discovered was not to her liking, or her husband's, dad Wodzinsky. Even though his everlasting good temper and cheerful mood, Frédéric suffered from an incurable disease: he was a "consumptive".

So, it was necessary to cancel the plan. But nobody spoke a clear word about it. The Wodzinskys just let things die down. Maria's letters became scarce. Those of mom Wodzinska became trivial, bearing a distant tone, to which Frédéric responded, unwillingly, "send my respects to Miss Maria". The longed-for invitation of the Wodzinskys to have Frédéric with them during the holidays, for the summer of 1837, never came to his hands.

And Chopin did not ask for explanations either. Neither Maria nor anyone else. He capitulated silently. His one and only complaint was not to respond to the last letter Maria sent him:

"I can only write these few words to thank you for the pretty cahier you sent me. I shall not say with what joy I received it. Words would not suffice. Please accept the assurance both of my sincere gratitude for it and of the lifelong attachment felt for you by all our family and particularly by your least gifted pupil and childhood friend. Adieu. Mamma sends you a tender kiss... Do not forget us.

Maria

And that was that! The last letter Chopin was to receive from Maria Wodzinska. When he realised that his hopes had come to nothing he took all the letters he had received from his fiancée and the other Wodzinskis and tied them together with a ribbon to form a bundle on which he wrote two words: Moja bieda ... My misfortune.

Ballade No. 1 in G minor
Chopin composed the first of his four ballades between the years 1835 and 1836, precisely the years in which his relationship with Maria Wodzinska went wonderfully. It was Chopin's favorite and so he told Schumann when he played it for him, after Schumann praised the performance and the work.

A piece of extreme hardship, it is, however, frequently performed in concerts for its lacerating lyricism and possibilities of brilliance for the virtuoso. More than once, some fragments of the work have become part of a movie soundtrack. The most recent occasion was in 2002 when we could listen to a curious three-minute "arrangement" in Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist. In the scene, a German officer asks the protagonist to play something on the piano in an abandoned house used as barracks by German soldiers.
In our modest opinion, the physical and emotional conditions in which the pianist actor finds himself, in the midst of war, without feeding for months, barely would have allowed him to play a traditional nursery rhyme.
The rendition is by the American pianist Krystian Zimerman. It's an irreproachable performance if we agree that some reason will he have had to take all the time he wanted before attacking the chords at the minutes 4:39 and 7:40.

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