Chopin: 4 Ballades (Zimerman)

Easily one of the best Chopin recordings ever made. [Highlights/comments below] 00:00 -- Ballade No.1 in G minor 09:36 -- Ballade No.2 in F (A minor) 17:28 -- Ballade No.3 in A-flat 24:57 -- Ballade No.4 in F minor A milestone in the Romantic piano literature, and a stupendous recording of it. The number of great moments in this is probably too great to count (06:48, 08:03, 15:52, 18:40, 24:23, with many more in between, and the entire 4th Ballade is a single unbroken wonder from its miraculous beginning onward -- although see the famous passage at 28:36, and the numinous 34:18). Chopin is -- popularly, but not critically -- seen primarily as a great melodist, which reputation does him a great disservice. In the Ballades Chopin does something which Beethoven reserved for his sonatas (and which Chopin never did in his), which was to introduce daring and very effective structural modifications to Sonata form. One obvious example of such a novelty is the