Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 06/23/2006, uploaded on 09/01/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The waltz was a foreign musical form to Polish-born Chopin. During his brief stay in Vienna, he wrote home to his parents, “I have acquired nothing of that which is specifically Viennese by nature, and accordingly I am still unable to play waltzes.” Nevertheless, he composed about twenty waltzes during his career. His early waltzes began as a clear imitation of what he likely heard in the great ballrooms of Vienna, maintaining the dance’s form and rhythm with melodies that could rival The Waltz King himself. With time, however, Chopin’s interpretation of the waltz transformed into a unique genre of concert pieces in which the dance served merely as the skeletal framework around which he built his creations. These later waltzes sometimes exceeded the prescribed tempo of the dance or encroached upon the rhythms of the mazurka—at times, it seems as if they are only waltzes in name only. Though not published until after his death, the two waltzes of opus 69 both date from early in Chopin’s career and stand somewhere upon the middle ground in the spectrum of his waltz style.

The first waltz, in A-flat major, was composed in 1835 and is often referred to by its nickname “L’Adieu” or “The Farewell Waltz.” Composed in Dresden, Chopin presented the work to Marie Wodzinska before leaving for Paris. Chopin had fallen in love with Wodzinska and had even proposed marriage. However, his current status as a poor musician led her parents to reject him as a possible suitor for their daughter. Thus, personal reasons likely factored into Chopin’s decision to not have the work published. Though professing to be in a major key, the waltz begins deceptively with a chromatic bass line unmistakably in F minor. Yet, the measures leading into each important cadence draw the music into A-flat major. The result is a sense of melancholy resignation. The middle section, at first dreamy but then becoming more resolved in character, adopts the rhythmic accents of the mazurka.

Second of the set, the waltz in B minor was actually composed much earlier in 1829. The work must have been ill-pleasing to the young composer as it was one that he wished to be burnt upon his death. Quite to the contrary, it was instead published and has become one of his oft-performed, though relatively unimportant, compositions! Cast in a simple ternary form, the melancholic outer sections with subtle Polish influences frame a brighter middle episode in B major.     Joseph DuBose