Chopin: Sonata No.3 in B Minor, (Fialkowska, Kissin)

Even among Chopin’s late works, the stands out as a work whose greatness is particularly hard to parse. It is characterised, especially in the first movement, by contrapuntal complexity, subtle motivic linkages that derive from the shape of melodic lines (see how 0:50 anticipates 1:33), and harmonic density; in the hands of a pianist whose grasp of its architecture and densely argued thematicism is anything less than perfect it comes across as oddly unproportioned. Chopin makes some bold structural decisions in the work: in the first movement’s recapitulation, for example, Chopin nearly leaves out the first theme entirely, because it has been so aggressively explored in the development section (in passages that come close to being the best Chopin ever wrote), and because it resolves the long-term instability that the first theme group sets up. This sonata also features, in its last two movements, some of Chopin’s most inspired textures: the third movement is a nocturne that sits right up th