Waltzes and Scherzos

Frédéric Chopin’s special gift was his remarkable ability to transform conventional musical forms into unique and memorable works of art for solo piano.  Some are as compact as his fifteen waltzes, some, as extended and complex as his four scherzos.

The waltzes bear only a superficial resemblance to the popular Viennese dance music of the time. Sparkling, graceful and tinged with an ineffable melancholy, these compositions succeed in conveying an air of mystery while retaining their ballroom splendor. Though they yield countless treasures even to keyboard veterans, most of these pieces present little technical difficulty to the player of only moderate skill.

A “scherzo” was originally a musical joke. One finds little humor, however, in Chopin’s remarkable scherzos. Of them Schumann once asked, “How is gravity to clothe itself if jest goes about in dark veils?”  Chopin’s scherzos are truly novel metamorphoses of the form — tumultuous emotional outpourings that frequently attain tragic heights. Their originality and profundity well reward the effort required to master these relatively difficult compositions. This volume includes:

The Fifteen Waltzes
Op. 18
Op. 34, Nos. 1–3
Op. 42
Op. 64, Nos. 1–3
Op. 69, Nos. 1–2
Op. 70, Nos. 1–3
E Minor (1830)
E Major (1829)

The Four Scherzos
Opp. 20, 31, 39, 54

As Chopin’s student and, later, his teaching assistant, Karol (Carl) Mikuli (1819-1897) – Polish pianist, composer, conductor and teacher – was in a particularly privileged and advantageous position to take into account all that the master brought to his playing and teaching. His editorial contributions to this volume reflect his understanding of the principles that underlie this body of work, imported to him in word and deed by the composer.