Chopin: Barcarolle in F# Major, (Volodin, Dong-Hyek Lim, Zayas)

This isn’t a barcarolle. I mean, sure, it’s in the name, but if you’ve actually listened to this and thought, “What a lovely Venetian gondola-song,” you’re insane. The is really Chopin’s 5th Ballade – and it probably ranks alongside the . (I know only one water-based description of this work that doesn’t reduce it to kitsch, from Iwaszkiewicz: “We walk on water into nothingness.”) The work is fairly self-explanatory, but a couple of notes about what makes it stand out. First: the sheer consistency of its lyricism. The Barcarolle is so relentlessly lovely that it contains significantly less contrast than all of Chopin’s large-scale works. There are only two points where lyricism takes a backseat (about which see below). Second: the use of ostinato and pedal points. My first real memory of the Barcarolle was hearing its opening LH figuration and thinking it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Throughout the work, the LH has a gentle insistency – both in the rising/falling line of the outer sections, or the pulsing warmth of the middle. As for pedal points – the two non-lyrical sections of the are marked by startling LH pedal points on E (4:50) and F# (7:00). Both moments are extraordinary. The first features one a kind of stasis knit out of chromatic voice-leading, which suddenly opens into the famous sfogato (Ravel: “From the depths, a quick luminous trail rises…). The second is sublime in the Burkean sense: something so intense it passes through beauty into something like terror (or awe). Over that grinding F#, the music modulates into wild territory (A# major, anyone?) before spinning out of control into a Neapolitan augmented 6th (/tritone sub) resolving to the tonic. Third: the prevalence of unusually dense textures (even by the standards of late Chopin). Nearly every bar features some striking counterpoint, which is never repeated in exactly the same form. The gentle opening LH figure thickens into tectonic octaves at 5:50, while the coda obsessively develops what first appears to be a passing outer/inner voice in the B section (compare 3:01 and 7:00). Fourth: harmony. Can we talk about the augmented 6ths? There’s the (French) A aug 6 at 2:59, gently dropping the passage from A to G# major; the (German) D aug 6 at 3:23, congealing over a C# pedal, the A (German) aug 6 at 4:24, adding in passing C# minor colour, followed almost immediately by a C (French) aug 6 that reverses that shift; and of course that epic, hallucinatory G (German) aug 6 at 7:29. One other moment I especially love is the B# dominant 7th poking up at 6:38. It’s a secondary dominant (leads to E# dom 7, then A# minor – which, by the way, slips back into C# via yet another A aug 6), but also a tritone leap from the immediately preceding F# harmony. Because the Barcarolle is so pretty, it’s actually quite rare to come across a bad interpretation of the work. That said, these three performances are spectacular. 00:00 – Volodin. Volodin’s got a marvellously energetic approach to Chopin, and his playing here is both free and intense (those arpeggiated chords at 2:13!). That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of careful musicianship: listen to the way the arc is shaped at 1:28, how he clears the air starting from 4:06, or how the lower trill on the A# enters as an unbroken continuation of the inner voice at 5:49. But the defining quality of this performance is ecstasy: it’s one of the few that is not afraid of the pedal F# at 7:00, and actually follows Chopin’s sempre f instruction. 08:16 – Dong-Hyek Lim. A perfect archetype of “modern” pianism (and I don’t mean that pejoratively!) – incredible control of voicing, dynamics, and lots of sparkling detail. At 9:17, for instance, he nails the notoriously tricky staccato/pedal/leggiero sixth sound (you can even hear the slur over the last four notes of the descent). And starting from 9:47 there is some lovely voicing – first the lower voice in the RH, and then (in the second run) the LH top line transfers to the RH. The rising chords at 10:40 are played like a single long inhalation, while the middle section features fine pianissimo playing and very clear separation of primary and subordinate musical elements. The same hierarchisation features in the exceptionally clear coda (15:28). 16:50 – Zayas. Zayas’ playing is marked by a quality that’s become a bit scarce these days – intimacy. The introduction is laden with rubato and dies away in a long overhang of pedal, while the B section’s theme is taken in a rapt, beautifully voiced whisper. There are little improvisatory gestures scattered about, such as the staccato on the RH turn at 17:44 or the LH voiced nudged forward at 22:34. And there is also a surprising sense of large-scale structure: Zayas holds back for much of the piece until the main theme makes its return at 23:11; and in the coda she comes close to matching Volodin’s intensity.