Garrick Ohlsson Reveals Chopin’s Most Painful Dissonance

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-05

[00:00:00]The Shopenjiman or Balad was a miracle in [music] its time.

[00:00:06]That's a howling dissonance for even now it's still intense. It has a certain soulful mournful improvisational quality if you will.

[00:00:18]>> It goes without saying that Garrick Olsen is one of the greatest Shopopan interpreters of our time. A winner and later a judge of the Shopan competition.

[00:00:26]He has lived with this music for his entire life. So when he says that Shopopan's first belad was a miracle in its time, of course he's referring to the piece's beauty, but also just how radical the piece is. In this lesson, Garrick shows us just how subversive and incredibly profound the first Balab is.

[00:00:45]He shows us how Shopen creates drama in the very first few bars before the piece has even really gotten started. a Neapolitan harmony, a dissonance in the left hand, and an opening melody which should sound not like a pianist, but rather like a singer [music] taking the longest breath of their life. You can watch Garrick's full lesson on the first Bad on Tonebased Premium. Get started with a 14-day free trial by checking the link in the description below. Enough from me. Let's let Garrick take it from here.

[00:01:13]>> I'll be very analytical and professorial and tell you that uh it begins with an introduction on the Neapolitan 6. That's because the notes in it, with one exception, outline that chord. So they start with the [music] the Neapolitan 6th of G minor is an A flat chord.

[00:01:31]So now the B flat doesn't belong in the chord, but it's kind of a passing note.

[00:01:35]It's not really what you remember.

[00:01:42][music] It's it's pretty clearly outlining that.

[00:01:46]Then in the third bar, he already changed he was established that. Let me play you those first bars with no particular interpretation.

[00:01:55][music] [music] So, we know we're here. But then he changes direction, makes a curly queue around and takes you away from a flat, but not definitively. There's no harmony in it yet.

[00:02:19]So, he curls around the E flat, which is fine. [music] But suddenly, ah, whoops, we're in a different place now. What's happening?

[00:02:30]By curling around the F sharp in this way, he's taking us out of a flat.

[00:02:40]And that A natural, of course, takes us right quite out of a flat. And then he sits down onto a D, but we don't know where we're going. Then he finally gives you the first harmony of the piece. And this is one of the most significant bars in all of music of its time, uh, because of what he does to it. So, let me just play that all again in sort of fast motion just to get that into your ear.

[00:03:09]Then it changes mysterious sort of asking if you will why what then we get the first harmony which is a C minor chord.

[00:03:23]Don't know where [music] that's come from which resolves very naturally down to there. [music] Perfectly normal cadence but listen to what he does in one note in the left hand.

[00:03:42]Ah, that's a howling dissonance for its time. Even now, it's still intense.

[00:03:50]Oh, it hurts.

[00:03:52]Those minor seconds are often very painful and very beautiful sounds, right? So, or minor 9th in this case.

[00:04:03][music] So, we're just aching for it to resolve to a D, which it doesn't immediately. He holds it for a whole bar and then just leaves the B flat hanging in the air and then gives you a D in the bass which we've already had and then resolves [music] it and the [music] t the tension is dissolved. Now, what's interesting is that at the time in the late 19th century, they had a very different attitude toward editing than they do now.

[00:04:46]An editor's job was to improve or change even notes. And I have from my first teacher, an Englishman, an old Auggner edition from about 1910 in which that dissonant Eflat is boulderized. It's changed you know and the reasoning that was given was that such a refined elegant composer as Shopen could not have meant such a course such a coarse ugly dissonance. It must have been a slip of the pen. So what you got was something very ordinary which instead of being very poignant and really special is merely pretty.

[00:05:29]So, Shopopen was violated. A lot of music was violated. In our era, we are much more concerned with what a composer wrote and try to get through good editions which we have many of now to the actual cleanest possible text and um that's of course admirable. Uh so we no longer by the way consider that a coarse brutal dissonance but at the time many people would have said how dare you. So, but this is the you know the greatest most elegant composer of his time. So, he does that [music] and just leaves that B flat which you hardly hear but if let me if I try to play it properly maybe you'll hear it hanging in the air as the left hand goes away.

[00:06:27]And that's part of the storytelling aspect of this piece. In other words, Shopen sort of gives you proposes, let me tell you something. But he does that he leaves you hanging. And he leaving leaves you hanging acoustically. And one of the strange things about pianos is I've said it before and I'll say it again. Um it's a box of day crescendos.

[00:06:46]Any note of the piano only gets softer until it finally disappears. The louder it is, the more you hear that diminuendo.

[00:06:58]If it's soft, you don't hear it so fast.

[00:07:02]It sits there. And part of the pianist's art, what you have to do, what your art is about is learning to how to manage all these diminuendos in relationship to each other. And in in this particular cadence, you have to make sure that even though the B flat can't be too loud, there's a little crescendo to it.

[00:07:26]We still we still have to hear it so that we can go on and let it resolve. Okay. I think I've maybe beaten that horse quite enough at this point.

[00:07:40]The next thing, and this is a bit of a complaint of mine because I've heard so many pianists play this piece. very often they set the introduction up in a fine way and it's a nice introduction and everybody's happy. You get to the famous dissonance and then it's almost like when the moderat starts it's like okay we're we're going here we go.

[00:08:08]So we're waiting and very often I hear as if we're already now underway in our journey in the story. But I think I've made it abundantly clear that what Shopen writes in the first notes of this melody with this beautiful curve and descent is a resolution of what came before.

[00:08:41]It's a resting point. And he even phrases that way. Da da da da da da. The next note D is a response. It's not a continuation.

[00:08:52]It's da It's not da da da da da da da d.

[00:08:56]It's an ending. The singer has to take a breath there.

[00:09:03][music] And in when the singer takes the breath and sings two notes, that singer asks a question. So, it's not just going to go on in a kind of automatic way. But I'll have to leave that to you to sort out because there are so many ways of doing it. But let me try to give you a few ideas before that.

[00:09:24]Look at how particular Shopopen is about how he's written this theme.

[00:09:30]He makes a fingered pedal and he uses the written pedal, the actual right pedal of the piano. But he writes a half note, a dotted quarter, a quarter, an eighth note. And then this this this A is naked, left by itself in the air, very much like a Mozart cadence in a classical piece. There's a tendency in classical music for most cadences to thin out at the end, sometimes almost take a bow. Think of the Mozart 311.

[00:10:02][music] [music] It rounds out. It takes a little bow.

[00:10:10]Then it goes then it goes on. It's not an that would be what we call unmusical, of course. So in this case, I find it a little bit unmusical if I dare to say it to play.

[00:10:29]It's not bad because Shopopen never sounds bad unless you really do something horrible to him. He's too strong for that. But um now don't wait that long. But [music] and then this resolution gets another harmony. So he keeps you constantly hanging. And I don't want you to take all that time, but just be aware of the relationships of these notes.

[00:10:58]Now, let's talk for a second about rubato. Rubato, which means robbed in Italian.

[00:11:04]People in romantic music understand very well that you just can't. Shopen writes this thing with this beautiful um lengths of notes.

[00:11:14]He writes it one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times or so. And it comes back a number of times later in the piece.

[00:11:23]We know that because of the nature of the piece, it's not a muric piece. It's not vertical. It's not sort of all neat and crisp. It's not obviously that's ridiculous. It has a certain soulful mournful improvisational quality if you will. So what we don't want to hear are five or six ofum in you know all standing vertically in order. We are allowed to go a little faster, a little slower to express them.

[00:11:52]Now what I tend to also hear in performances far too often is the fact that especially young pianists don't think about varying their robot. I'll give you a bad version of what I hear too much of. Not only heading toward the downbeat and connecting the phrases in a way that he didn't write, but playing them all pretty much the same way.

[00:12:13]Usually hurrying, what I call a pendulum robot. Many teachers have called it that. You know what I mean? um the pendulum sort of stops then swings nicely back. Um it's beautiful once or twice or even three times but after a while you might want to enjoy the fact that each of those notes are beautiful in a different way. So once you might want to play them virtually in time.

[00:12:48]Once you might want to hold do their pendulum robboto otherwise you might want to find an expression note somewhere else like perhaps the B flat.

[00:13:00]Now I'm exaggerating for effect but that's like what an Italian opera singer does. They hold a certain note not only because they're showing off their beautifulful voice and the fact that they can but because it's also beautiful. So you you can really you can try that [music] [music] Now I'll go for the the B flat [music] and so on. No, I've I've gone a little bit over the bounds of what I would consider good taste just to try to really bring that out. Now, Mozart and Shopopen both said the same thing about tempo rubato, which is that the singer rather the accompaniment [music] is in time and the and the right hand the singer sings freely. Well, that's almost impossible to do because it involves two sides of your brain. And I don't even want to get into the fact that I've never heard anybody quite do that exactly except certain pop singers.

[00:14:08]If you listen to Judy Garland, you'll hear that or Barbara Stryson or any number of people who have a backup band and the singer can wander in and out.

[00:14:17]Um, and that may have been what Shopen and Mo and uh Mozart intended. I'm not quite sure how to do it. In this case, you don't have um you don't have a background motor rhythm going on. So the the the robot, the sway, the differences of beauty will will can be determined at different points. Um for example uh the fourth time this comes well the first three times the fourth time he actually changes the notes. So that's significant. And then when he when he lands here, he doesn't make that an end of a phrase. He now begins a phrase or [music] it's always been.

[00:15:13]So for the first time, that can give you a different rhythmic shape. I don't think you should push or pull it perhaps as much as I did when I was illustrating it for you, but that's just to give you an idea of the range of possibilities. It's a very good idea. I find one conductor once told me, do maximize the robot or the freedom or the effect you want and then shave it down to an acceptable good taste component.

[00:15:44]In other words, don't don't go way out in a limb, but but keep that expression there. In other words, when you're trying to find make an expressive piece like this come to life, do more. Be more expressive. Exaggerate to the point of, you know, your teacher or even you saying, "Oh, this it's nice, but it's too much. It's too much." Then you but try to keep that expression or else because if you start with too little, it's kind of hard to have enough. You know, there's not if that's not enough salt in a dish, it's kind of you you can put some on afterwards, but sometimes it's better when it's been cooked into the into the food. Um, so I've probably said some things which may may have offend offended some of your teachers or even you. I don't intend to do that.

[00:16:24]It's just I'm trying to give you different ideas, but I what I definitely tend not to like is too much of that that kind of uh falling into the downbeat robot. Now, another thing is the accompaniment that the pop the papas of the oompas in other papa. Well, there's only the papas.

[00:16:47]There's no.

[00:16:50]So, pay a lot of attention to those that they don't become interfering with your melody that they enhance the singer's tail so they don't become [music] I know you wouldn't do that, but sometimes it once again those fall into always happening the same way. And I wish I could tell you a magic solution, but they're they're a heartbeat which varies with the emotionality of the music.

[00:17:19][music] >> That note shouldn't be loud and these should not interfere with it. You know, if your lower accompaniment note gets louder, what the ear will hear, this is very bad habits in piano playing.

[00:17:33]You'll actually hear a melody that goes, [music] which is not what the melody is.

[00:17:43]If you're playing the Mozart 545 in C major, it just says piano.

[00:17:50]Does that mean you play every note the same? Then it would sound a bit like this.

[00:17:59]But that's accompaniment and that's a melody. So your your singer has to be a bit more [music] or a bit less. Then the cutment has to be a bit less. The singer has to be a little bit more. Not so much that it just glares out like a trumpet.

[00:18:14]Oh. Oh yeah, there's the tune.

[00:18:17]But it has to be within a within a range that makes you happy to listen to. The worst example of it, and it's funny because six-year-old kids do it playing The Happy Farmer by Schuman, is, you know, they're six. they don't they may not be geniuses like Mozart. So sometimes you'll hear something like this, you know. So that's what I'm trying to talk about with those have to exist very well and independently but under the cover of the melody and it's all incredibly delicate and it's difficult because the lower notes of the piano are louder and if you don't do anything about it it's going to sound like that and we have we generally don't enjoy that very much. It doesn't doesn't make us feel very magical.