Balladen

The composition of the two Ballades, written in 1845-49 and 1853, came at a time of change for Liszt. The successful virtuoso increasingly saw himself as a composer striving for formal clarity, as the B minor Sonata, also from 1853, proves. When Liszt began work on the 1st Ballade, he had just separated from his partner of many years, the Countess Marie d'Agoult. He called the first sketches for the work Dernières Illusions. Better known is the 2nd Ballade in B minor, with whose ending he struggled (the two fortissimo endings, first published according to Liszt's autographs, can be found in the appendix of our edition).