chopin 4th ballade

[birba]

I have a japanese pianist studying with me for a few days, and she played the 4th ballade.  (fortunately, we found a grand piano in Nice!)  I found the coda way too fast and empty of any sort of musical expression.  We talked about it and she said she had a record of a young wilhem Kempff playing it.  It seems he played it almost at the tempo of the opening of the ballade.  Looking through it, I discovered (and felt VERY embarassed about never having noticed it before - even having performed it a couple of times in my life) there are no indications of tempo in the piece, besides the usual accelerando, stretto, rit. etc.  In fact, I'm beginning to think the coda should be played in tempo.  We have one tempo for the entire ballade - and a great range of musical expressions throughout the same andamento.  It's a big discovery for me and gives me a whole different outlook on the piece.

[richterfan1]

hmmmm same tempo for the whole 4th ballade? Sounds original, but... Unreal, thats almost impossible for thie piece.... all i have to say :

[gn622]

sorry for being off topic, but this is one of the pieces that i really would like to learn to play one day, can you tell me what difficulties it posses so i can practice the technique's required?

[birba]

Wow.  Chords, octaves and double thirds to begin with.

[werq34ac]

sorry for being off topic, but this is one of the pieces that i really would like to learn to play one day, can you tell me what difficulties it posses so i can practice the technique's required?

Technique is the easiest thing about this piece, which is by no means easy. I mean even those opening notes, they have to be played beyond perfection. There's really no way to practice that. One may never find the right way to play them.

And I like to think of all of the Chopin etudes as preparation for this piece. I mean it does involve several of the techniques used in the etudes, off the top of my head instances I can think of are techniques used in 10/2?, 3, 6?, 9, 10, 11?, 12, and 25/2,6,10,11?,12.

As for the musicality, there's really not a good way to prepare other than studying other large Chopin pieces like the other ballades.

Answering the post.. I'm not going to attempt this piece, but following along and listening to the score, I don't see any indication at all for the piece to get any faster than tempo primo in the coda. And I think tempo primo works fine as a tempo for the coda. I mean Zimmerman plays it approximately at this starting tempo. He does stretto up to it however. And the accelerando he does at the end is written in.