Classical Music | Piano Music

Frédéric Chopin

Scherzo no. 4 in E Major Opus 54  Play

Claudia C. Valetta Piano

Recorded on 08/06/2010, uploaded on 10/03/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Chopin’s four scherzi for the piano are remarkable pieces among his oeuvre. Bold and dramatic, each displays Chopin’s skilled and imaginative handling of large-scale musical forms. The last of them though, the Scherzo in E major, op. 54, stands apart from the others. Whereas the previous three were tempestuous in nature and profound in expression, this last scherzo is enraptured with an overwhelming sense of gaiety and joy. It was composed in 1842 during a relatively happy period during the composer’s life. His relationship with Aurore Dupin, better known as George Sand, was in full bloom and he spent the summers of 1839-43 at her estate in the quiet commune of Nohant.

The Scherzo begins quietly with the principal theme—a mixture of rich sustained chords and jubilant arpeggios—full of rustic simplicity and jocularity. The contrasts contained within this theme are played out over the entire scherzo section with sustained chordal or octave passages alternating with brilliant arpeggios or scales. In the final bars of the first scherzo, a feeling of expectance is ushered in by a short melodic figure derived from the principal theme which builds into an incomplete cadence in the key of C-sharp minor.

In this last key, the Trio section begins with a più lento melody over an accompanimental figure taken form the scherzo’s theme. Despite being in the relative minor, the melody here is not a sad one but instead one of entrancing beauty. Though it bears no relation other than key to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, it is not difficult to imagine a similar moonlit scene throughout the course of the Trio. The music builds in tension at the conclusion of the Trio, placing chromatic harmonies over a dominant pedal, in anticipation of the Scherzo’s reprise. Effecting the transition between the two sections is a trill-like figure, first a semitone above and then a full tone, on the dominant of E major. The Scherzo returns in grander fashion, fuller voicing and with the quasi-trill underlying the first restatements of the melody. The trill then disappears for much of the Scherzo’s reprise but returns again in the coda. The only overtly dramatic section of the piece, the coda builds through imitative passages, thunderous octaves and sweeping scales to a magnificent ending.      Joseph DuBose

 

Claudia C. Valetta plays F. Chopin: Scherzo n. 4. Live in a Concert. To see the video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3216fmjoAc