Contrapuntal skill is shown in the working out section.  Chopin always wears his learning lightly; it does not oppress us.  The inverted dominant pedal in the C sharp minor episode reveals, with the massive coda, a great master.  Kullak suggests some variants.  He uses the transient shake in the third bar, instead of the appoggiatura which Klindworth prefers.  Klindworth attacks the trill on the second page with the upper tone—­A flat.  Kullak and Mertke, in the Steingraber edition, play the passage in this manner:  [Musical score excerpt from the original version of the Op. 47.  Ballade]

Here is Klindworth: 

[Musical score excerpt of the same passage in Klindworth’s edition]

Of the fourth and glorious Ballade in F minor dedicated to Baronne C. de Rothschild I could write a volume.  It is Chopin in his most reflective, yet lyric mood.  Lyrism is the keynote of the work, a passionate lyrism, with a note of self-absorption, suppressed feeling—­truly Slavic, this shyness!—­and a concentration that is remarkable even for Chopin.  The narrative tone is missing after the first page, a rather moody and melancholic pondering usurping its place.  It is the mood of a man who examines with morbid, curious insistence the malady that is devouring his soul.  This Ballade is the companion of the Fantaisie-Polonaise, but as a Ballade “fully worthy of its sisters,” to quote Niecks.  It was published December, 1843.  The theme in F minor has the elusive charm of a slow, mournful valse, that returns twice, bejewelled, yet never overladen.  Here is the very apotheosis of the ornament; the figuration sets off the idea in dazzling relief.  There are episodes, transitional passage work, distinguished by novelty and the finest art.  At no place is there display for display’s sake.  The cadenza in A is a pause for breath, rather a sigh, before the rigorously logical imitations which presage the re-entrance of the theme.  How wonderfully the introduction comes in for its share of thoughtful treatment.  What a harmonist!  And consider the D flat scale runs in the left hand; how suave, how satisfying is this page.  I select for especial admiration this modulatory passage: 

[Musical score excerpt]

And what could be more evocative of dramatic suspense than the sixteen bars before the mad, terrifying coda!  How the solemn splendors of the half notes weave an atmosphere of mystic tragedy!  This soul-suspension recalls Maeterlinck.  Here is the episode: 

[Musical score excerpt]

A story of de Lenz that lends itself to quotation is about this piece: 

Tausig impressed me deeply in his interpretation of Chopin’s Ballade in F minor.  It has three requirements:  The comprehension of the programme as a whole,—­for Chopin writes according to a programme, to the situations in life best known to, and understood by himself; and in an adequate manner; the conquest of the stupendous difficulties in complicated figures, winding harmonies