CHOPIN Frédéric, Three Waltzes Op.64
Chopin’s Three Waltzes, Op.64 were composed in 1846–7. The first of them, the so-called ‘Minute’ Waltz’, looks back to Chopin’s earlier ‘brilliant’ style and was said by one contemporary to be a musical portrait of its dedicatee, Chopin’s friend and pupil Delfina Potocka. The second, in C sharp minor, is an exquisite miniature combining intimacy and melancholy in the most concise, unsentimental way. The last of the Op.64 waltzes is more enigmatic: its moods shifting uneasily at times, but finding repose in the central Trio.
© Nigel Simeone