Scherzos (Chopin)

Unlike the classical model, the musical form adopted by Chopin is not characterised by humour or elements of surprise, but by highly charged "gestures of despair and demonic energy".

"[2][a] Starting in the early 1830s, after his departure from Poland, Chopin's musical style changed significantly, entering a mature period with compositions of exceptional single-movement pieces on a monumental scale, stamped with his unmistakable signature.

This musical transformation was preceded by Chopin's new attitude to life: after adulation in Warsaw, he felt disillusioned by lukewarm audiences in Vienna; then his prospects as a pianist-composer seemed less inviting; and lastly nostalgia and the recent 1830 Polish uprising drew him back spiritually to Poland.

[3] Chopin's early musical style originated in the "brilliant" virtuosic pianism of Daniel Steibelt, Carl Maria von Weber and Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

10, he introduced new highly concentrated contrapuntal elements; in the Nocturnes, the brilliant effects evolved into a mature ornamental melodic style; and, most importantly, he was able to imbue his works with an over-arching harmonic structure, effortlessly alternating lyrical and virtuosic passages.

Beethoven's scherzos perfectly exemplify this type of movement, with characteristic sforzandi off the beat, clearly articulated rhythms and rising or falling patterns.

Although various Beethovenian features are preserved—an A–B–A structure with sections A and B contrasting, triple time, pronounced articulation and sforzando accents—in terms of musical depth, Chopin's four scherzos enter into a different and grander realm.

1 involve texture, dynamics and range: strident chords are followed by rapid will-o-the-wisp passagework, rising with crescendos—motifs that recur during the movement.

In summary, Chopin established the one-movement scherzos as a genre in which the piece grew out of the opening fragmentary gestures, heard at the outset in the initial short and contrasting musical ideas.

[1] The four scherzos are part of the established Chopin piano repertoire and have been recorded by many well-known pianists, including Vladimir Horowitz, Alfred Cortot, Walter Gieseking, Arthur Rubinstein, Emil Gilels, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Maurizio Pollini, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dinu Lipatti, Sviatoslav Richter, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Emanuel Ax, Andrei Gavrilov, John Ogdon, Ivo Pogorelich, Yundi Li, Seong-Jin Cho, Murray Perahia, Krystian Zimerman and Boris Berezovsky.