Composed 1846; 13 minutes

The seven-year-old Chopin created his first published composition with a charmingly modest G minor Polonaise. Just three decades later, the complex, unique Polonaise-fantaisie, which even Liszt found ‘unfathomable,’ and the Cello Sonata, were the last extended works in Chopin’s final productive period of creativity. In all, Chopin wrote some 15 polonaises and they contain some of his most beautiful and stirring music. While the earlier polonaises bear traces of the peasant origins of the dance, by 1835, four years after the fall of Warsaw, Chopin’s two Op. 26 polonaises begin to express the noblest feelings and purest type of national character for Poland’s past glory, present heartbreak and future aspirations. The title Polonaise-fantaisie came relatively late during Chopin’s prolonged work on his Op. 61 which, as the music progressed, he initially viewed through the lens of a fantasy. The distinctive polonaise rhythm in the main theme was added after work was underway, and the structure itself was created from within, revealing the qualities and spontaneity of an improvisation. The music appears to evolve outwards from the nostalgia of the first real melody and, even before it, from the bass triplet figure in the luminous, spacious introduction, where time appears to stand still. Links can be found between all the themes that Chopin introduces in this composition, over which he labored longer than any other single work, except, perhaps, the Cello Sonata which he was working on simultaneously. It contains some of his most far-reaching, forward-looking excursions in both tonality and restless, constantly shifting harmonies. Yet, for all its apparent irregularities, the music is meticulously, cohesively and convincingly constructed within a modified and somewhat disguised ternary design. The chorale-like Poco più lento heralds an episode that resembles a slow movement, punctuated by two passages recalling earlier episodes. Thumbprints of the polonaise recur throughout, yet the piece still manages, in an ineffable way, to create the impression of a spontaneous, satisfying, inspired fantasy.