Grande valse brillante (Chopin)

Frédéric Chopin, Grande valse brillante in E flat major, op.18, title page of the first edition, 1834

The Grande valse brilliant in E flat major, Op. 18, is a piano work by the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin .

Grande valse brillante in E flat major, Op. 18th

Emergence

Beginning of the composition

The Grande valse brilliant E flat major, Op. 18 by Frederic Chopin was born in 1833 for the English Chopin schoolgirl Laura Horsford . The autograph was owned by Allen Rowland in the USA for a long time , whose ancestors had acquired it in the 19th century, perhaps from Laura Horsford personally. It bears the handwritten inscription: “Valse. dediée à Mlle Laura Horsford par Frédéric Chopin - Paris, le 10 Juillet 1833 ”. From 1957 to 1992 it was deposited at Yale University ; on June 24, 1992 it was auctioned by Christie's auction house for £ 60,500 . The current owner is unknown. Another autograph was discovered in October 1967 by the American pianist Byron Janis in Thoiry Castle in the Yvelines department near Paris, where it is still located today, together with the autograph of the waltz in G flat major op. 70 No. 1. Chopin's fair copy, the apparently used as an engraving model for the first edition, came to the Musée royal de Mariemont in Belgium in 1917 . It also bears a dedication to Laura Horsford, but is not dated.

The first publication took place in July / August 1834 by the Breitkopf & Härtel publishing house in Leipzig . At the same time issues appeared in Paris and London.

It is Chopin's first, clearly stylized waltz, and one of his most popular compositions today. The interpretation of the work requires a fast pace and confronts the player with major technical problems. The numerous rapid tone repetitions in particular can only be mastered by professional pianists.

literature

• Maurice Brown: Chopin. An Index of his Works in Chronological Order . London 1960, p. 90 no.92
• Krystyna Kobylańska: Frédéric Chopin. Thematic-bibliographical catalog of works . Munich 1979, pp. 38-40
• Krystyna Kobylańska (ed.): Fryderyk Chopin: Letters . Berlin 1983, pp. 241 and 451

Web links

• Grande valse brillante, Op. 18 (Chopin, Frédéric) : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ^ Byron Janis : Chopin and Beyond. My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal . Wiley, Hoboken New Jersey 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-87233-8 , p. 14 ( limited preview in Google book search)
2. ↑ Description of the manuscript in Christie's
3. ↑ See Hofmeister's musical monthly reports , July / August 1834, p. 60 ( digitized version )