Hyperion Records

The premiere of Chopin's Second Concerto in F minor Op 21 took place on 17 March 1830 in the National Theatre, Warsaw. The event was a sell-out (800 people, his largest audience to date) and was so successful that a second concert was arranged for 22 March. These concerts marked Chopin’s first commercial successes as a pianist. ‘The first Allegro is accessible only to a few’, he wrote to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski. ‘There were some bravos, but I think only because they were puzzled—What is this?—and had to pose as connoisseurs! The Adagio and Rondo had more effect; one heard some spontaneous shouts.’

The haunting second movement was inspired by Chopin’s infatuation with the soprano Konstancja Gladkowska. ‘Six months have elapsed and I have not yet exchanged a syllable with her of whom I dream every night’, he wrote in 1829, confessing that ‘while my thoughts were with her, I composed the Adagio of my concerto.’ Like the E minor’s Romanza, it is in the spirit of a nocturne, except that it is interrupted by a striking passage accompanied by tremolo strings, a device adopted at a similar point by Moscheles in his G minor Concerto of 1825. A vivacious Hummelesque rondo concludes the work with some imaginative touches, such as the second subject being underscored by the violins playing col legno (i.e. the strings are played with the back of the bow instead of the hair) and the coda introduced by a solo horn proclaiming the key of F major in which the work ends.

from notes by Jeremy Nicholas © 2008