Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52, was composed in 1842 in Paris and Nohant and revised in 1843. The work was dedicated to Baroness Rothschild, wife of Nathaniel de Rothschild.
Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 in E Minor is one of the 24 preludes opus 28 for piano. By Chopin’s request, this piece was played at his own funeral, along with Mozart’s Requiem.
The Prelude No 15 in D-Flat Major, nicknamed “Raindrop”, strikes one at first as an oasis of peace and calm. However, the transition from the bright key of D-Flat Major to the tenebrous C sharp minor brings dark, gloomy, disturbing sonorities.
Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23, dates to sketches Chopin made in 1831 during his eight-month stay in Vienna. It was completed in 1835 after his move to Paris, where he dedicated it to Baron Nathaniel von Stockhausen, the Hanoverian ambassador to France.
Chopin Prelude No 8, in F sharp minor, counters the calm simplicity of the seventh with a broad stream of sonority of peculiar beauty, diffused in rising and falling waves of airy figuration. Among its admirers was Witold Lutosławski, who called it a ‘wonder’.