Chopin: The Four Ballades (Cho Seong-Jin)

Chopin’s ballades are written to such a pitch of harmonic innovation, expressive power and structural novelty that they sort of exist in a valley of their own making. Nothing any other composer wrote (even other ballades, to be sure) really compares to them. The most immediately striking feature about them is their narrative musicality: transitionary passages are extraordinarily beautiful, and really do not need to be justified by what they are moving to or from; and a small digression might open up a whole