CHOPIN GALA | YEAR-END CONCERT—Celebrate the close of the year with an evening of musical poetry in the Small Hall of the Konzerthaus Berlin, nestled on the historic Gendarmenmarkt.
This recital explores the extraordinary range of Frédéric Chopin’s musical imagination, from the dramatic architecture of the Four Ballades to the intimacy, elegance and virtuosity of his later and shorter piano works.
The Four Ballades form the monumental first half of the programme. In these works, Chopin created an entirely new model of instrumental narrative, combining poetic freedom with highly sophisticated formal structures. Each Ballade develops its own dramatic trajectory, while together they reveal the remarkable breadth and evolution of Chopin’s compositional language.
The second half opens a contrasting world. The delicate sonorities of the Berceuse, the refinement of the Waltzes and the miniature character of the Écossaises lead to the brilliant Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise, in which lyrical introspection and virtuoso splendour are brought together.
Within the ZeitenKlänge Music Festival, the programme presents Chopin as a composer who transformed inherited genres into highly individual forms of expression, creating a musical language whose sense of time, colour and poetic imagination continues to resonate far beyond the nineteenth century.
PROGRAMME
Frédéric Chopin
Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
Ballade No. 2 in F major, Op. 38
Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47
Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52
— Interval —
Frédéric Chopin
Berceuse in D-flat major, Op. 57
Three Waltzes, Op. 64
Three Écossaises, Op. 72, Nos. 3–5
Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise in E-flat major, Op. 22
Pietro Massa, piano