Chopin's Ballade No 1 in G Minor
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2008
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chopin's Ballade clearly tells a story, and yet that story differs for each person who hears or plays it.
Pianist Peter Donohoe heads a cast of people whose lives have been shaped and changed by hearing and playing this technically demanding, emotionally turbulent piece of music.
Featuring:
Peter Donohoe Pete Rosskamm Edi Bilimoria Richard Bielecki Andrew Armstrong Dr Jay B. Hess Joshua Wright
Series exploring famous pieces of music and their emotional appeal.
Producer: Rosie Boulton
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2008.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Traitors is back and so is that mysterious cloaked figure with the familiar fringe. |
| 0:06.7 | Yeah, it's me. |
| 0:07.9 | And when you've watched Claudia in the castle, join me, Ed Gamble, for the official visualised companion podcast. |
| 0:13.7 | And remember, I'll be listening. |
| 0:15.9 | Okay? |
| 0:16.7 | No, seriously, I love it. |
| 0:18.5 | What a faithful. |
| 0:19.7 | We'll unpack betrayals and spill scandalous secrets with celeb guests, traitors' legends, |
| 0:25.0 | and murdered and banished players. |
| 0:27.1 | The Traitors Uncloked. |
| 0:28.4 | Watch on EyePlayer, listen for more on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.4 | You're listening to a download of soul music from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:38.1 | The beginning of the piece has a certain sense of foreboding. |
| 0:43.1 | From the very first sea natural octave in the bass, |
| 0:46.5 | there's a great sense that a great deal of energy is about to be unloosed on the listener. |
| 0:56.0 | The opening of this ballad, which is ostensibly in G minor, it starts on a C natural, |
| 1:02.5 | which for that period was daring, to actually not begin on a note that was related in some way to the key of G minor, was a real kind of audacious |
| 1:19.1 | statement at the time. |
| 1:21.3 | At the very beginning of the ballad, it's a short seven-bar introduction, and it starts in |
| 1:27.4 | what sounds like a completely different key |
| 1:29.0 | so from the very beginning |
| 1:30.9 | Chopin is already opening a completely new sound world |
... |
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