Liszt: Ballade No. 2 in B minor, S. 171 ( Goerner)
Written at around the same time as the Bm Sonata (and sharing some marked similarities with it key, use of thematic transformation, a quiet ending), Liszts second Ballade is one of his most important and moving works. Its built around violent contrasts the first theme is a kind of black, formless void, while the second is intimate and the third, waywardly melodic. There are three main climaxes (5:34, 9:25, 13:22), the first and last of which feature the first theme, but in radically different forms. The structure of this piece is hard to parse, but its essentially in 4 sections which can be loosely analogised to sonata form (but then, any ternary structure can be loosely analogised to sonata form). Across these four sections, the first theme recurs 7 times, growing in intensity each time (until it drops into B maj), while the second is constantly given a new colour whenever it reappears. The use of pure texture here (the opening chromatic line) as a structural feature which is independently developed i
|