Fryderyk Chopin · Piano Concerto No. 1 · 1830
The last music at home
«It seems to me that my second Concerto in E minor will have no value for me until you have heard it.»
A map of the concerto
Forty minutes at a glance
3:48The piano enters
I. Allegro maestoso · 3:48
The piano enters
4 / 11
After 138 bars of orchestra the piano finally comes in - with the same stern melody that began the concerto. Now it sounds different: one person is playing it.
Worth knowing
Chopin, aged twenty, wrote this concerto in Warsaw in the spring and summer of 1830 and first played it on 11 October. It was his farewell concert: three weeks later he left and never came back. We will listen to it together, movement by movement, with his own words from letters to a friend.
Written second, published first
Chopin played his F minor concerto in March 1830 and started this one right after, calling it himself “my second Concerto in E minor”. It became No. 1 in print: the E minor came out in 1833, the F minor only in 1836.
Violins with mutes
Of the slow movement Chopin wrote to his friend Tytus: “like dreaming of a beautiful spring time, but by moonlight”. That is why the violins play it with mutes - “a kind of comb” on the strings, he explained, that gives “a nasal, silvery tone”.
Orchestra, quintet or solo
Chopin first tried the concerto at home with a string quartet. And the first German edition of 1833 was sold just that way: with orchestra, with string quintet or with no accompaniment at all - so it could be played in a drawing room too.
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