Chopin Ballade in G minor

Chopin’s Ballade in G minor was my favorite piece to play. When I play a piece, I try to tell a story with it. The Ballade, split into many, incredibly contrasting sections, provided countless stories to tell. When I first became comfortable with playing the whole piece through by memory, my imagination went wild. One day, it would be a knight dying while saving a princess from her own family. The next day, it would simply be a butterfly with an injured wing in a garden. To me, the Ballade is more an emotional journey than a concrete story, which is what made it so fun to play.

The enjoyment I got from the Ballade only happened after months of practice. For me, learning the piece was a long and difficult process. I would listen to the piece and fall in love, then sit down to practice it and fall off the bench in frustration. Sometimes I would practice until my fingers hurt and still feel like I was making no progress. Some things I learned from it was how to move on from a particular exercise or section if I was not improving, and how to trust myself. Sometimes, concentrating hard on one aspect made it more difficult for me to play a section than if I had simply let it come naturally. For example, sometimes in technical sections, I would only focus on getting the right notes and simply moving my fingers fast enough, and it just would not click for me. Then, I would try to focus more on articulation and wrist flexibility. Everything else would fall into place more easily because I was not overthinking and instead trusted my abilities.

I hope you enjoy my performance of this brilliant piece because I sure enjoyed playing it!