chopin ballades?

[musical_fingers]

could you rank the chopin ballades in order from difficulty? I would like to learn a ballade, many say that i the 3rd one as that is the easiest, but others say the second one is?

[chopiabin]

I asked this exact same question. There's a whole thread about it somewhere, but the consensus seems to be, from easiest to hardest:

3
2
1
4

[fnork]

I've played only the 3rd ballade, and it seems easier than the others. The fourth is certainly the hardest... Anyway, the third is a lot of hard work, even though it's the easiest one. There's a terribly difficult left-hand figure near the end, where the left hand plays sixteenth notes in an octave figure (like this: low C, low G, G one octave higher, back to low G. or low C, up to low B, B one octave higher, then back down etc etc), and it's supposed to be very legato and piano. Hard to make it sound beautiful!

Anyway, it's a really beautiful piece to play, and fun too. Probably a good ballade to start with.

[sharon_f]

Here's one recent thread on the comparative difficulty of  the Ballades:
https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=repo;action=display;num=1095292583;start=11

[Troldhaugen]

If you can play the easiest ballade (although the word "easiest" is irrelevant), then you can pretty much play the rest of them. It's just a matter of spending a few extra hours practicing. Just go for whatever piece is your favourite!