Hyperion Records

Light-years away from Chopin’s dramatic tone poems of the previous two decades and Liszt’s contemporaneous Ballade in B minor, Gottschalk means ‘ballad’ as in ‘song’—a simple melody of sixteen measures, reminiscent of part of a well-known tune by Haydn! The key changes from A flat to D flat for a placid second subject before the ‘hymn tune’ returns twice in more elaborate guise.

from notes by Jeremy Nicholas © 1994