[2] It was completed in 1835 after his move to Paris, where he dedicated it to Baron Nathaniel von Stockhausen, the Hanoverian ambassador to France.

Though Chopin's original manuscript clearly marks an E♭ as the top note, the chord has caused some degree of controversy, and thus, some versions of the work – such as the Klindworth edition – include D, G, D as an ossia.

[4] A thundering chord introduces the coda, marked Presto con fuoco, to which the initial Neapolitan harmony re-emerges in constant dynamic forward propulsion, which eventually ends the piece in a fiery double octave scale run down the keyboard.

A performance of the piece is central to the plot of the 2002 Roman Polanski film The Pianist, where it moves a German officer to help the eponymous protagonist and supplies him with food.

It also appears in the 1991 film Impromptu, where Chopin is playing this piece when he is interrupted by George Sand and meets her for the first time.

In 2010, the British journalist Alan Rusbridger (the editor of The Guardian) dedicated a year to learning Ballade No.

[9] After Chopin's death, the Belgian violinist and musician Eugène Ysaÿe made his own arrangement of Ballade No.

[10] Japanese figure skater and two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu skated his short program to Ballade No.

The program has earned him four world records and contributed to the win of his second Olympic title such as the completion of the first career Super Slam in the men's singles discipline.