F. Chopin - Ballade no. 4 in F minor Op. 52, Greg Niemczuk live

[@pottedrodenttube]

Absolutely beautiful, your connection to Chopin's music is truly special.

[@gregniemczuk]

Thank you so much!

[@nojohns1748]

*Drops gorgeous piece* *Refuses to elaborate* *Leaves* Absolute Madlad

[@taiteyard3567]

I mean, he has an hour long yap session about the piece on his channel, I think that counts as elaboration. 😅

[@gregniemczuk]

@@taiteyard3567 👍😀👍😀👍😀👍😀👍

[@xeno255]

You have such a deep respect for Chopin, and give attention to the whole piece rather than just the coda like many performers today. It's really refreshing to see someone playing a piece for its music and story rather than just any other performance piece. Your interpretation inspired me to pick up this piece again, so keep up the good work :)

[@gregniemczuk]

@@xeno255 I'm so happy to hear that! And Yes!!! For me every single bar in this piece is holy!!!!

[@mickizurcher]

Same!

[@mickizurcher]

@@gregniemczukholy, yes!!!

[@Marie-AgnèsPénicaut-u1l]

Bravo ! Thanks a lot for sharing this beautiful interprétation of the ballad number 4 . I’ m pianist and for me with the ballad number 2 of Chopin these 2 pieces are very hard to play well . Thanks also a lot for your explanations very interesting about mazurkas and nocturnes : you help me very a lot for Learning better nocturnes op 32 number 1 and 2 . Have a good week. Marie Agnès 🤓

[@mickizurcher]

Listening again!🩵

[@rnz2363]

very beautiful tempo, Greg. and great playing as always...

[@joannawronska4100]

SO WONDERFUL AS ALWAYS, MAESTRO!!!!! Thank you for my favourite Chopin's Ballade and for an excellent performance👏👏👏🎶🎶🎶🌹🌹🌹🎉🎉🎉💖💖💖✨✨✨😍😍😍, congratulations for over 34000 subscribers to your great channel, you deserve more and more..., I've added this video to my old public playlists called "My Favourite Classical Music" and "Mr Grzegorz Niemczuk", again my best regards, have a happy week, Joanna.

[@maple7432]

wow such a great and unique performance I really like the tempo

[@gregniemczuk]

Thank you!!!!

[@josevila-verde5346]

Thank you for also emotionally translating Chopin’s genius. Another powerful performance.

[@mariajedrejko7872]

Genialne dzieło, wspaniałe wykonanie!!!

[@PhilHarrison762]

Thank you Greg! My pleading has been answered..... and is most certainly NOT disappointed. I love your reflective interpretation🤩🤩😍

[@gregniemczuk]

@@PhilHarrison762 yes!!!! I thought about you while uploading it!

[@SAikipiano]

You played the coda with so much passion, amazing performance you are an inspiration !

[@shaon8896]

Recapitulation with counterpoint at 3:45 is my favorite moment of any classical piece 😁 great playing as always

[@stefanoventuri2996]

Bellissima interpretazione maestro.... complimenti

[@bartusyy8697]

Genialne wykonanie jednego z najbardziej poruszających utworów w repertuarze fortepianowym

[@gregniemczuk]

Dziękuję bardzo;!!!

[@bartusyy8697]

Do zobaczenia we Wrocławiu

[@gregniemczuk]

@bartusyy8697 do zobaczenia! Ballada f moll będzie grana!

[@ichtisek]

Piękna interpretacja! Lubię słychać tych nieco mniej ogranych utworów mistrza Fryderyka, bo po latach szkół muzycznych... no, niektórych znieść juz nie mogę;). Pozdrawiam i życzę dalszych muzycznych (i nie tylko) sukcesów😊.

[@kerstinl8519]

What a fantastic piece. Full of polyphony. Thank you. 😇

[@mickizurcher]

Greg The KZbin algorithm just popped up this master class with Murry pariah (because I have been listening to yours ) with a quite advanced student and I’m not sending it to you because I think you need to learn something from it but I was wondering if you had heard it ? I thought it was pretty interesting as I listened to the young man play, I had my own thoughts about it, and Indeed Murray, pariah validated what I was thinking, so I feel like I’m learning to listen better m I thought the young man very good technically, but The soul of Chopin needed to be brought out which pariah was trying to do. , more rubato needed, more thoughtful question and answers thought it was a very good master class. I know I’m not ready to play this, and I know I had started Prelude No. 8 very recently, but it is more of an étude and I think I’m going to switch and start in on the 4th ballade I know it’s going to be a huge undertaking but I cannot resist what Chopin is giving us here I know I have this is going to tae years. Always as you say many times revisiting, letting it rest like a good wine I think you so much for your tutorial. It just means everything to me. Thank you🙏🙏🙏 kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4bUqmlmraqCoLcsi=aKx29NFmW3HdyvmW

[@silviachibeni7648]

Tão apaixonado por Chopin !!!!! Lindo de se ver !!!!

[@Xantares2003]

Dziękuję bardzo z Kazachstanu❤

[@1oskarek]

❤❤

[@bethc9535]

How beautiful!

[@thewordbtrue2461]

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Such perfection! 💞

[@jp_charland]

My favorite ballade! Bravo! This is furu egg! Crazy it's one of the best sounding model D in an egg factory!!

[@gregniemczuk]

Also mine!!! This is my first ever recording of it. It will be more in the future for sure

[@Liborun]

Bravo!!

[@EvSigve]

I like it. I also like the speed.

[@demianwaldmann]

Saul Goodman at his peak

[@ricardoromeromartinez8656]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻bravoooo

[@mickizurcher]

Greg, have you been playing this piece for a long while? So beautiful!

[@gregniemczuk]

It's very difficult and complex ... Yes, for quite a long time but with many breaks in between

[@mickizurcher]

@@gregniemczukages like fine wine and it should change over time because you do🩵

[@danillo_piano]

Bravo, Greg!

[@tojma07]

The thumbnail 😂

[@gregniemczuk]

Hahahahha

[@CAG2]

Just like the op 10 no 4 lecture thumbnail

[@MagdalenaSlek]

Ma Pan w planach nagrać analizę poloneza Chopina b-moll op. posth?

[@gregniemczuk]

Tak!

[@MagdalenaSlek]

@@gregniemczuk dziękuję za odpowiedź, czekam więc z niecierpliwością 😁

[@hangxu2154]

I plan to come to Poland to visit (maybe watch the Chopin competition) but Polish is so hard to learn.

[@xibrune]

is this your first recording of this ballade? sounds magical

[@xibrune]

I've been waiting for this recording for a long time, you play this moment after the 'fugue-part' so amazingly

[@gregniemczuk]

Yes! My first ever! Surely not the last!

[@mickizurcher]

@@gregniemczukyou rise always to the occasion!

[@mickizurcher]

@@gregniemczuk7:02 🩵

[@gregniemczuk]

@@xibrune yes, the first

[@Sébastien_2348]

I will intentionally not listen to this video because I will hear it live in Prague, but maybe I won’t be patient and play it in the next few days😂

[@gregniemczuk]

Wow!!! Fantastic!!! So good to read this comment! Of course every performance is different but there are some general ideas which are similar. Maybe that's a good idea not to listen!!!!

[@Sébastien_2348]

@so looking forward on 3rd of December

[@asiuleczka]

❤

[@sunareekaewnat8837]

Greg, I do not like this interpretation at all. 1) I think there needs to be more contrast between the two statements in the introduction, even if it interferes with articulation of the dueling crescendo and diminuendo; 2) It is just not clear at all to me from the dynamic modulation and rubato what the emotional evolution you are trying to capture is from the five appearances of the first theme; and 3) if you are going to slow down the bridge, there needs to be more dynamic modulation and rubato to give it more emotional impact as I do not think that by "in tempo" Chopin was saying "no variation in speed.". Listening a few more times.

[@gregniemczuk]

Thank you very much! The interpretation of this piece is a long process and I will surely take your words into consideration. I am aware of the fact that in this very piece my playing and interpretation is drastically different from what we are used to in other recordings. This is my biggest challenge that I see in the score completely different Chopin's ideas than anybody else. Maybe I'm wrong, and there will be an evolution of interpretation. We will see. I'm definitely searching. So I haven't recorded this on my CD project yet. But one thing is sure for now - I don't want to play faster the places where Chopin doesn't say it, only because everybody does .....

[@sunareekaewnat8837]

@@gregniemczuk How would you describe the emotional nuance you want to attach to each of the 5 appearances of the first theme?

[@sunareekaewnat8837]

@@gregniemczuk Finding a way to attach distinct emotional colors to the five appearances is far more difficult than in Ballades No. 1 and 3 where there are only 3. The ballades to me are emotional journeys so there always must be progression within the music even if you end up, as in Ballade No. 2 at an earlier point.

[@gregniemczuk]

@sunareekaewnat8837 yes, I totally agree. I'll still work on that, and every performance for sure will be different. For me the first theme here is like a schizophrenic person....

[@gregniemczuk]

@@sunareekaewnat8837 first - it's a presentation of the person in the story. Second - this person gets a little inquiet and unsure about the future. Third - something bad happens at the bottom of his soul (Lowe voice) which ends in the first, little drama. The fourth - is actually 4 personalities in one person (polyphony), the 5th - he gets panicking because of realizing th as t he's mentally sick. Than the second theme brings us to the climax and drama.

[@organman52]

You have made this into an expression of how you feel about the piece. But it is not what Chopin created. "As performers, you have to play with honesty, not to express yourselves but to give expression to the work; not to try to say my Beethoven Sonata, my Chopin Scherzo, but a Scherzo, not even by Chopin, a Scherzo that was given Chopin to write and that no longer needs Chopin to be a masterpiece. It no longer needs a performer, or a listener. It needs nothing. It is just floating in the air, ablaze with light. Then, you look at it or you don't." - Nadia Boulanger

[@gregniemczuk]

That's interesting.... But if you listen with looking at the score....can you tell me where exactly I am not playing what Chopin indicated? I do try to simply play 100% of what he writes. With emotions, of course, like an actor reading the text of someone else, but only what Chopin wrote. Don't you think that when we interpret the piece of music we are like theater actors? We must play everything what's written but enriched with our own emotions? Music without feelings is cold and dead.

[@organman52]

@@gregniemczuk First, you do not grasp the union between Chopin's tempo marking - Andante con moto - and the 6/8 meter signature. The metric unit is the dotted quarter note in this meter, not the eighth note. The tempo you chose is ponderous and it sounds 'careful.' Many of the passages are sloppy because you do not yet possess the technical facility for this masterpiece. Why do you get faster at the G flat major section? Why do you not observe the crescendo/descrescendo markings? These are essential to Chopin's writing. Why do you ignore so many dynamics? Why do you turn a 'tenuto' note into a lengthy fermata? Why do you not go to tempo primo when it is indicated? And throughout, you are making facial and other physical gestures that a] do not change how the music sounds and b] tell us how YOU feel about the piece, hence, my Boulanger quotation. Music is not how the performers might 'feel.' This - and every masterpiece existed before any of us started playing it. May I add - the business of 'interpretation' is nonsense. What is there to interpret? I would further that you need to play pieces that are within your technical grasp - not the most difficult ones that take years if not decades to master.

[@gregniemczuk]

@organman52 thank you for this critic. I will still stay with my feeling of eighth note as a meter to this tempo. Any faster tempo sounds too fast for me. It's not an etude. It's a story, for which we need time to understand the plot. You're saying that because you're used to the recordings of others.

[@organman52]

@@gregniemczuk I do not need the performances of others to know what is on the page. Studies with Nadia Boulanger over 50 years ago provided me with valuable insights into musical architecture and performance. The only time the eighth note is the metric unit is in 3/8 and 4/8 meters. And 3/8 is often 'one beat to the measure.' The eighth note is never the metric unit in 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 meters. The eighth note is the duple subdivision of the metric unit in meters of '4' while the eighth note is the triple subdivision in meters of '8.' Your playing of this Ballade sounds like each written measure is two measures of 3/4 - as if it is a slow valse. Your eighth notes sound like quarter notes. This is not what Chopin intended. The same problem exists in pieces such as Mozart's A minor Rondo - Andante in 6/8 with the dotted quarter note as the metric unit. Might I add - your performance takes way longer than any of the others.

[@gregniemczuk]

@organman52 i just give you one question: look at the coda. Count the time/meter when it's played in the final tempo. Than compare to the beginning. It should be THE SAME TEMPO. It's funny that all the pianist even the greatest, suddenly play the coda much SLOWER. WHY? .... Because the beginning is too fast. I have different feeling of this Ballade, after many years of contemplating it and its real meaning. I also made analysis of it if you're interested you can find it on KZbin. I hope you'll like it.