Liszt started writing his two Ballades in 1845, during a time of personal turmoil. The successful virtuoso increasingly saw himself as a composer who strove after formal clarity, as shown by the B minor sonata that was also composed in 1853. When Liszt began work on the first Ballade, he had just separated from his mistress of many years, Marie Comtesse dAgoult. He called the first sketches for the work Dernieres Illusions. A better-known work is the second Ballade in B minor, with whose ending hestruggled (the two fortissimo endings in Liszts autograph have been pu blished for the first time in the appendix to this edition). Edited by Ernst-Gunter Heinemann and Rena Charnin Mueller with fingerings by Andreas Groethuysen
