Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35
Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849), was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation.
We know that Chopin’s inspirations profoundly affected not only the course of pianism, but also the course of music itself. In the realm of keyboard innovation, his piano style fully exploited the singing quality of the instrument and embodied a whole new world of sonorities resulting from such factors as the unique wide-spread figures that accompanied his endlessly beautiful, long-breathed melodies and, importantly, the fanciful, exquisite filigrees that are not just ornamental but become organic elements.
This Sonata opens with four attention-grabbing slow measures, the first two descending notes of which are to be very important in the development section. The fast, galloping main theme that follows propels us into a scene of extreme agitation, then of contrasting repose by way of the lyric second theme
The second movement is Scherzo. The term can refer to a fast-moving humorous composition that may or may not be part of a larger work. The scherzo in this sonata shows explosive rhythmic and dynamic power, as well as its furious insistence on repeated chords and octaves.
The Funeral March third movement is powerfully tragic music that receives consolation from a severely simple dry-eyed melody at midpoint.
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