Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 — a ballade was originally something sung, a song that tells a story. Using the word for a purely instrumental piece starts here, with Chopin, and later composers followed him. 264 bars and 9:51: seven slow opening bars like someone clearing their throat, two quite different tunes returning in turn, and a last ninety seconds that reach the densest writing in the piece. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
He took a word for singing and gave it to instrumental music
Before Chopin, a ballade was a song that told a story — words, a plot, verse after verse. Applying the word to a piano piece with no words at all starts here. Written around 1835 and published in 1836, it is dedicated to Baron von Stockhausen, the Hanoverian envoy in Paris. Three more followed, and the four became a genre; Liszt, Brahms and Fauré all later wrote ballades of their own.
Why a new name? Because this kind of piece has no fixed pattern the way a waltz or a nocturne does. It sets out from a quiet opening, passes through several characters, comes back altered, and drives to an ending it does not return from. That is how a story moves, not how a dance or a song moves.
As for the story itself, there is no settled answer. Schumann recorded that Chopin had mentioned the Polish poet Mickiewicz to him, and later writers have paired the four ballades with Mickiewicz's four narrative poems. Chopin never said which went with which, and the score carries no title or note of any kind. That is a reported remark, not a verifiable fact — what the piece is about is for the listener to decide.
A film, an Olympic short program and an anime finale all used it
The ballade played for the German officer in the 2002 film The Pianist — though by Szpilman's own account it was the Nocturne in C-sharp minor that day.
Yuzuru Hanyu skated his short program to it from 2014 to 2020, and Your Lie in April closes with Ysaÿe's violin-and-piano version.
Two tunes, and neither comes back as it was
The first seven bars are a single sentence: both hands climb together and stop on a chord left hanging. They are slow enough to sound like someone clearing their throat before speaking.
The first tune enters at bar 8, swaying in threes, very quiet and always sinking, as if talking to itself. It repeats, circles back, and grows uneasy.
Around three and a half minutes someone else speaks — a completely different melody, bright, wide, rising, with the volume let out. It is the first time the piece really opens.
The two tunes then alternate, each return more agitated than the last: the first sinks further, the second grows louder, and around six and a half minutes the second comes back at its most expansive.
After eight and a half minutes comes the coda, the fiercest stretch in the piece. The rhythm turns into continuous rushing figures, both hands running up and down, the range stretched to its widest, and it does not stop until the final chords land.
Two hundred and sixty-four bars, the last fifty-six written differently
264 bars and 5,239 sounding notes, with no repeats; the first 7 bars are written in 4/4 and from bar 8 the metre is 6/4, in G minor.
The bar-by-bar note counts mark the structure plainly. Up to bar 7 there are around 10 notes a bar — the density of an introduction. From bar 8 it settles between 18 and 22, the texture of the first tune.
Around bar 68 the count jumps to about 28 and the range opens upward to G5: that is where the second tune enters.
Through the middle the two alternate and the count moves between 11 and 27; near bar 166 the range is pushed to A6, the second tune at its most expansive.
After bar 208 the page changes character: the count holds between 19 and 26 while the note values shorten sharply and the range spreads to both extremes. That is the coda, the densest 56 bars in the piece.
The range runs from D1 to F7, over 6 octaves, and the shortest note lasts 0.032 seconds — in the fast stretches 30 notes go by in a second.
The difficulty is making ten minutes into one thing
First, a sense of structure. This runs close to ten minutes and both tunes return several times; treat every return with the same weight and speed and it sounds like one passage on loop. Each return needs a little more than the last, so that the ending has somewhere to arrive.
Second, those first seven bars. They are slow, sparse, and every note is exposed, so any unevenness is audible. They are the easiest part to underrate and the hardest to play well.
Third, the coda. After bar 208 the task is not speed but order — the hands run in opposite directions and the shortest note lasts 0.032 seconds. Fix the hand shapes and fingering first, then build it up slowly, pass by pass.
Fourth, the pedal. This source marks two hundred and ninety-five pedal spans; a full pedal in the quiet sections lets the bass blur the melody above it, while too little in the dense ones turns the passage into unresonant hammering.
The tempo is 44 to the quarter as printed at bar 1, and the source's own tempo shading is kept, so the difference between introduction and coda survives.
We rate this 5 out of 5.
The other three ballades, and his other large pieces
Of the four ballades, No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52, is already on the production list; Nos. 2 and 3 are to come.
For something of comparable scale by the same composer, the Heroic Polonaise, Op. 53, is on this channel and could hardly be more different — that one holds its head high throughout, while this one travels from quiet to out of control. For the quiet side, the Nocturnes Op. 9 No. 2 and Op. 27 No. 2 are both here too.
