Chopin's Waltz in B minor, Op. 69 No. 2 — he wrote it at nineteen, revised it repeatedly, and never sent it to a publisher. It is posthumous: he died in 1849 and his friend Fontana printed it in 1852. It runs three minutes thirty-two in B minor, Moderato at 152 to the quarter. It has the three of a waltz and no intention of making anyone dance — the tune keeps falling, the middle brightens briefly into B major, and then it takes that back. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
He revised it repeatedly and never sent it out
This was written in 1829, when Chopin was nineteen, still in Warsaw.
He kept changing it. Several manuscripts survive and they do not agree — sections present in one are missing from another, and the ornaments differ. They are the trace of a composer revising and never being satisfied. He gave it to friends and never sent it to a publisher.
Chopin was extremely particular about what went into print. He published eight waltzes; we play about nineteen, the other eleven posthumous, including this one.
He asked on his deathbed that the unpublished manuscripts be destroyed. His friend Julian Fontana did not, and instead sorted the papers and published them, assigning the numbers Op. 66 to Op. 74 in retrospect. So Op. 69 is a later number than anything he published alive, while the music is among his earliest.
The same rescue produced the Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66 and the Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1, also on this channel.
The waltz changed character in his hands. Viennese waltzes were for dancing; Chopin's are for listening — he never wrote one for a ballroom. Schumann's remark that they would need half the dancers to be countesses is about exactly that.
It is in three and has no interest in making you dance
Bar 1 holds a single note, and then the waltz accompaniment arrives — the clearest way into the piece.
The tune keeps falling. Every phrase drops from a height, reaches the bottom and starts again; that, not the tempo, is why it sounds melancholy.
The left hand plays a standard waltz accompaniment, a bass note and two chords, and the right does not co-operate — its accents often avoid the first beat, so the two sides sit slightly apart.
After 0:40 the tune takes ornaments; from 1:18 it turns to B major, the one place it brightens. From 1:55 the minor returns, more firmly, and after 2:52 comes the last round, where the falling opening tune is said once more and closes on four notes.
It is good to leave playing: three and a half minutes, never above f, with no sudden attack. There is more pulse than in a nocturne, which suits reading and the evening — but the three will carry your foot along, so it is not in the focus-at-work playlist.
One hundred and forty-six written bars become one hundred and seventy-seven
One hundred and forty-six written bars with repeats and first and second endings, opening out to one hundred and seventy-seven bars and one thousand nine hundred and seventy-two sounding notes, in 3/4 and B minor, with a middle in B major (the signature moving from two sharps to five and back). The score carries twenty-one dynamics, thirty-nine hairpins, a hundred and fifty-nine pedal spans and two hundred and twenty-eight slurs.
Bar counts run between one and nineteen, averaging eleven point one — apart from the opening note and the close, almost every bar holds nine to thirteen. That is the standard shape of a waltz: a tune in the right hand over three in the left, so the density stays steady on its own. Bar 1 holds one note and the last bar four; the counts drop below eight at the joins between sections, which is where the chapter marks come from.
The range is B1 to F sharp 6, five octaves, and the shortest note lasts 0.098 seconds. A hundred and fifty-nine pedal spans across a hundred and seventy-seven bars is roughly one a bar, normal for waltz accompaniment.
The difficulty is a regular left hand and a right hand that refuses to match it
First, the left hand. Bass plus two chords, once a bar, and it has to be steady — that is the floor of the piece. Weight the bass slightly and keep the two chords light and equal.
Second, do not let the right hand follow the left's downbeat. The tune's accents often land on two or three; make the hands agree and it becomes a dance, which this is not.
Third, the falling phrases. Every one drops, and the ends should not be pressed — let them reach the bottom so the next has somewhere to start.
Fourth, the B major middle. The signature goes from two sharps to five and the hand shape changes completely; it needs to be as fluent as what surrounds it, or "brightening" turns into "stumbling".
Fifth, the pedal. Roughly one change a bar, and a dirty change runs the basses together; the clarity of this piece is entirely in pedal timing.
The tempo is 152 to the quarter, printed at bar 1 with Moderato and taken as it stands. With repeats the piece runs a hundred and seventy-seven bars and three minutes twenty-eight, in line with the usual performance.
We rate this 3 out of 5 — one of the easier Chopin waltzes to get under the fingers.
Nineteen waltzes, and three of them are here
Nineteen Chopin waltzes are in general circulation, eight published in his lifetime and eleven posthumous. This channel has three: C sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2; D flat major, Op. 64 No. 1, the Minute Waltz; and this one.
Of the other pieces Fontana brought out after his death, the channel also has the Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1.
His other dance music includes some fifty mazurkas and the polonaises; the Polonaise in A flat, Op. 53, the Heroic, is already here.
