In 1836 Chopin introduced the term 'ballad' into piano music with the publication of his Ballad op. 23, although up to then it had only been used in literature and in vocal music. Indeed, all four of...
When Chopin gave his Opus 23 the title 'Ballade” in the mid 1830s, he established the piano ballade as a new musical genre which was subsequently taken up by others, including Brahms, Liszt and Grieg....
Fréderic Chopin's stay with George Sand on Mallorca in the winter 1838/1839 was ill-fated. Yet Chopin still managed to finish his 'Préludes” there which he had begun to compose in Paris. Today's inter...
With this poetic masterpiece all four of the recently revised 'Ballades” (HN 862) are now available as single editions. Following a restrained opening in C major and the first dreamy sounds of the the...
Along with the beautiful facsimile edition of the autograph score to be published on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Frédéric Chopin's birth (HN 3221), we are also publishing a completely rev...
Chopin's circumstances were rather strained in 1845, so that a planned trip to Italy with George Sand looked as if it would fall through. Yet with his 'Barcarolle' he immersed himself in the atmospher...
Johann Pachelbel, born in Nuremberg in 1653, a generation before Bach, is one of Southern Germany's most important post-Reformation organ composers. His compositions were already widely known at the t...
Frédéric Chopin spent his fifth summer at George Sand's country estate in Nohant in 1844. The time away from Paris gave the composer the necessary creative free space to produce the delicate Berceuse...
One of Chopin's most radical compositions, the B minor Scherzo leaves hardly any listener untouched. The wild main section, interspersed with brutal dissonances, frames the intimate trio, in which Cho...
Chopin gave the 'scherzo' a character all of its own, and his second Scherzo is probably the best known of the four works that he composed in that genre. In contrast to the first Scherzo, which surviv...