The 1880 score: Romance
The first page of the slow movement. Compare it with the first page of the concerto: there are clearly fewer lines. Chopin kept the orchestra light here so that it would not drown the piano.
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About
The slow movement is like a night song without words. Chopin himself explained what it should be: calm, melancholy, "a kind of reverie on a beautiful spring evening, but by moonlight". The orchestra is light here: no oboes, trumpets, trombone or timpani at all, and the violins play with mutes.
Listen to how the melody returns a little different each time, dressed in new ornaments, the way singers decorated arias in Italian opera. And before the end the piano seems to stop time with high, quiet notes.
Listen for this
Places worth hearing on their own
0:00 – 1:01
Muted strings
A quiet opening for strings alone. The mutes soften the sound - it becomes gentle and a little silvery.
Worth knowing
A mute is a small comb set on the strings of a violin. Chopin wrote to his friend that it makes the sound "nasal, silvery", and that without the mutes this movement "would fall flat".
The movement is headed "Romance" - the name then for a song without words. In his letters Chopin simply called it the Adagio.
The Romance is heard in the film "The Truman Show" (1998).
Konstancja Gładkowska was on stage that evening: in the second half of the premiere she sang a cavatina by Rossini. Chopin remembered that she came out “in white, with roses in her hair”.
Books often call the Romance a “moonlit spring night”. Chopin wrote something different: “a beautiful spring time, but by moonlight”. The word “night” was added later by his biographer Maurycy Karasowski, and that is how it passed into translations.
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Quiet here so far. Yours would be the first.
