Chopin's Barcarolle and Second Piano Sonata

Barcarolle, Op. 60

Ok, just to get this out of the way - one of the only reasons the Barcarolle is famous is because of the double trills, lets face it. These are some of the only double trills Chopin ever wrote (I do believe there is a brief one or two in the Grand Polonaise, Op. 22), and they are certainly hard to play. I think it's kind of a shame, really. The Barcarolle is a wonderful piece, very beautiful, and I think it's kind of a shame that when we think of it, the first thing we think of are those damn double trills. I suppose there's no way of changing that, really..

Piano Sonata, No. 2 in B-flat Minor

Chopin's piano sonatas are wonderful. The second is probably the most popular, next to the third. The first sonata is the ugly child with warts who sits in the corner, watching all the other kids play..

Actually, the first sonata is Op. 4. which was before Chopin really began to develop as a composer and take off. I would imagine it is very Classical in nature, since he wrote that before he began exploring with different Romantic ideas, so its probably really boring, at least in comparison to his tons of other masterpieces. I bet Felix liked it.

The second sonata is wonderful, the first movement starts off with that famous D-flat octave leap downward to the E naturals - Strangely enough, this starts off as if it were one of the Ballades, on a single pitch with no clear harmonic implications, and not in tonic. Interesting. The first movement is notable for its truncated form. refer to Roberto's blog (http://rds06c.wordpress.com/) for a little insight on the formal innovations. The second movement (Scherzo) is kind of nice. Chopin does Chopin things within - such as the moving entire chords in parallel motion in one direction, yada yada. The third movement is famous - the funeral march. Everybody and their mom has heard it.. its in alot of cartoons.. Something else that I've discovered: I read somewhere that Chopin's second piano sonata is modeled after Beethoven's Sonata Op. 26. In both sonatas the second movement is a Scherzo, and the third a funeral march - actually sounding very much alike. Chopin adds an extremely Chopin-esqe middle section, with a gorgeous melody that simply breaks your heart. The biggest discrepancy between Beethoven and Chopin is I think is the last movement. Chopin just rambles out a bunch of notes, Presto, which fly by in under a minute. Its a little absurd, but I'm sure Chopin had his reasons. It is one of Chopin's more interesting attempts, but it comes across as really odd, even for a Romantic piece. Chopin probably figured since he knew the first three movements would be good enough to sell the sonata by themselves, he figured he could play around with something experimental in the last movement..