Chopin: Berceuse in D-flat major, (Michelangeli, Rubinstein, Moravec, Ashkenazy, Pollini)

Like all of Chopin’s late works, the Berceuse is a pianistic masterpiece. But it stands out from the rest of Chopin’s late works, because it contains no innovation in terms of structure or harmony (cf. the Polonaise-Fantasie, or the Barcarolle and the radical harmony of its last pages). Instead, the Berceuse is a truly breathtaking showcase of ornamental-figural thematic transfiguration, featuring dazzling pianistic filigree, luxurious dissonances, inventive counterpoint, and a whole array of spectacular colouristic effects. Chopin imposes on himself the extreme discipline of a single four-bar phrase repeated sixteen times, always in the same meter and key, over an ostinato ground that *nearly* repeats itself in identical form in every single bar – structural minimalism paired with textural maximalism, as it were. It’s a wonder, given its formal constraints, that the Berceuse gives pianists so much space for interpretive freedom, but a bit of thought makes it clear that the pianist needs to make a wh