[FREDERIC CHOPIN, "BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR"] NARRATOR: There is one piece of piano music so extraordinary, so richly colored in darkness and triumph that it has cast a spell on millions of people around the world.

The "Ballade no.

1 in G Minor" by Frédéric Chopin is considered by professional pianists to be one of the hardest pieces in the piano repertoire.

The Ballade has become an internet sensation, generating millions of hits on YouTube and compelling thousands of amateurs to upload their own performances.

This film tells the story of how this remarkable piece, at just nine minutes long, is still affecting the lives of ordinary people almost 200 years after it was written.

[dogs barking faintly] DEBBIE: Paul was a smashing kid.

STEVEN: Mm-hmm.

Never a problem.

DEBBIE: Never a bit of bother.

Glad that it was a boy.

Always wanted a boy.

So, aye, it was great.

Brilliant.

At school, he was very easily distracted, very easily.

STEVEN: He wasn't really that interested, to be honest.

Quite good at rugby, and he played golf quite a lot.

And he came home, and he said, I'm not playing rugby anymore.

And then he came in a few weeks later, and he says, Don't pay my membership.

I'm not going to go back to the golf.

And we said to him, well, you've got a couple of weeks to sort something out, because you'll not be running about streets or anything.

That doesn't happen.

You'll find something.

And he was like, OK, and then we get a phone call from his school.

DEBBIE: And I thought, oh, no, he's getting in the wrong crowd.

He's been not going to school, or-- it was just--it was horrible.

So we went up, and we sat down.

The music teacher said, can you tell us who teaches Paul?

And I just looked at Steven, and he looked at me.

And I went, yous?

And she went, no, who teaches Paul to play the piano?

And we both said to him, Paul, when did you start playing piano?

And he says, oh, I just do it on my lunch or my break, just started playing it.

STEVEN: And we thought, at that point, we thought it would be like chopsticks or something that he played.

[classical piano music] I think adverts in the telly might have been the only time we heard anything to do with classical music.

It was a major shock in our life, we laughed.

Why would you play something like that?

Why not play normal music?

[laughter] [classical piano music] PAUL: For the first 15 years of my life I hadn't heard any classical music.

But now I was playing it in my free time, when I could in the school.

This is when I started again at lunchtimes and free periods.

I just started focusing on the piano, nothing else.

From the second I touched the first key, I then realized that a whole world has opened musically.

And it was in listening to the Ballade for the first time that I did fall in love with it.

I mean, I listened to it over and over again.

I had it on the CD players.

It was on my MP3 player.

It was unbelievable just how much I had listened to this at the time.

And I fell in love with this one piece.

[classical piano music] ["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] IMOGEN COOPER: The opening of the Chopin Ballade is, to me, like the opening of a theatrical curtain.

Where are we going?

But with a sad, sweet, discordant note.

Which leads us to the first theme.

And it's sad, and it's very beautiful.

Such power, such tenderness, such darkness, a huge amount of darkness.

LANG LANG: I mean, when the theme comes, it's very introverted.

It's the expression of pain.

Heartbeats, the pulse, it's quite dark and... [imitates heartbeat] It also shows Chopin's personality very well.

It's truly what he felt.

To have this really lyric but very complex mind.

It's one of the most beautiful pieces.

VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY: What would we be without Chopin?

We're transported to another level of existence.

There's no question about it, especially middle to late Chopin.

For us, it's one of the most important expressions in music that exists.

So we will never get tired.

We never can get tired of it.

Chopin was a genius who was developing.

I couldn't even begin to think of anybody calling it sentimental.

If some people do, then they don't understand the essence of his message.

PAUL: I decided in my sixth year that I wanted to study music.

And I applied for the University of Aberdeen.

STEVEN: When he said he was going to apply for university, I think then we started saying-- - Oh, university?

- We'll maybe take this a bit more serious.

Maybe there's more to this than we thought.

PAUL: I mean, university was very-- was unheard of in my family at the time.

I mean, this is a big step.

So I went up to Aberdeen for my audition.

STEVEN: His tutor came out and said to us, does Paul get lessons or anything?

I says, no, I says, he's just kind of self-taught.

[classical piano music] I felt so bad, you know, because I knew that he really loved it at this point.

- They said, if you were on a deserted island and you could only have one piece of music, they said, what would it be?

And at this time, my head exploded with different-- What would it be?

And that's when I first homed in specifically on just one-word answer straight off.

It was "Ballade in G Minor."

And I think it was that answer they were looking for.

["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] It was September 2007 when I went to university for the first time.

Quite excited to be there.

Made some friends, some new friends pretty quickly.

Life couldn't get any better.

I started noticing about three or four weeks into it that I was taking a sore head about two, three times a day.

Not really to complain about, but they were quite noticeable.

And this developed very, very quickly into happening more consistently.

Alarm bells started to ring, saying, this is not right.

[classical piano music] [shaking and rumbling] [screaming] [rumbling] ["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] IMOGEN COOPER: The second theme, very different in character, whispered happiness.

LANG LANG: Become much more mild, you know, this kind of more comfortable, a very positive hope.

After it's coming back, this time, it actually goes through even bigger emotional peak.

It's comfortable, same time brings a lot of energy, a lot of encouragement, a lot of power.

Basically, opens up the world that we need to face.

VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY: Energy, yes, but this energy not for the sake of energy, of course, energy that is full of substance.

Whenever I listen to Chopin, it elevates me to such heights that I couldn't describe it.

And it is the total truth.

Every time I play it or every time I listened to it, especially if it's a good performance, it confirms that existence is worth something.

PAUL: I can always remember, it was absolutely-- it was a beautiful day.

And I got a phone call from the hospital, saying, we would like to see you here tonight.

We need to discuss a few things.

And that night we went out to my local hospital to get some of the worst news ever.

[monitor beeping] STEVEN: The news just totally shattered us, I've got to say.

DEBBIE: It did.

- Because, obviously, it's a big shock for him and maybe him, being a bit younger, didn't understand the consequences, but we certainly understood the consequences right from the start.

We were under no illusion that it was a life-and-death operation.

PAUL: It turned out I had a brain tumor.

And the only question I said-- I stayed quiet for a couple minutes.

And the only question that came out my mouth was, am I going to die?

[clock softly ticking] [distant siren wailing] PAUL: I was in hospital for three months and underwent another four operations.

I was left paralyzed.

I was blind.

Didn't really know where I was.

I mean, who could have thought?

A week before, you were at university, and life was great.

The week after, you're literally on death's door?

STEVEN: When we first went in to see him the very first time after the operation, they told us he was completely blind and completely paralyzed.

- I still see it to this day.

- And we were told to hope and pray.

DEBBIE: Just one minute, your boy is there.

And then the next minute, he can get taken away in a click.

And it was horrible.

It really was horrible.

["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] PAUL: My dad thought it would be a great idea to give me an iPod, which included the "Ballade."

I listened to it over and over and over again.

I started homing in on special parts of it, one melody line at a time.

And that clicked that I had heard this before.

I got déjà vu.

I had heard this before.

Where have I heard this?

How have I heard this?

Then I remembered about school.

I remembered practicing it.

I remembered what piano was.

Wait a minute, I know who I am.

I know where I am.

I know why I'm here.

For that single piece of music, I could start to link my brain back to thinking normally.

LANG LANG: Then, you know, the explosion coda, fight between characters.

This one is pretty difficult technically.

STEPHEN HOUGH: Chopin uses the coda, I suppose, as a kind of section of despair, really.

And there is a sort of manic energy to this.

It's not just virtuosic, and it is virtuosic.

It's very difficult to play, and the fingers move fast and so on.

But it's emotionally tremendously honest.

Chopin is showing everyone his despair.

IMOGEN COOPER: The coda in this piece takes you back to the darkness.

This comes in the middle of a huge storm, a sort of cataclysmic storm when actually all the rocks are falling down from the cliffs.

And darker than that, you cannot get.

Yes, it's hard.

The whole piece is hard.

It's manageable, but it's hard.

[piano fades gradually] [waves crashing] ["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] [applause] [applause] PAUL: When it came to the "Ballade," not only was it the love of my life.

I lost it through complete memory loss and regained it through that one.

Through that single piece of music, I could start to link my brain back to thinking normally.

It made me start to function again.

So my ambitions after my tumor was to get back to university as quickly as possible.

Quite excited to be back to my friends at uni, and I was getting back and recovering.

And I started doing proper exercise.

I was swimming.

I was doing everything.

I was back to-- I was back to how I was.

I was happy with everything.

And one day after a concert, I felt suspiciously tired.

The following morning when I woke up, I sat at the piano.

And as I put both my hands up, my right hand just collapsed.

[classical piano music] I was paralyzed on the right-hand side.

STEVEN: When he came out of the car, just outside the house here, I'd come down to lift his bags up, and his hand was twisted and was flexing uncontrollably.

And his face was all ticking down one side.

And he's walking.

I had to get his arm and try and more or less carry him up the stairs to his room.

And it was horrific.

Because of the way he was, how ill he was, it took me three or four days to get over the shock of seeing him.

PAUL: So I went for more tests, and I can always remember waking up in the morning to a phone call from my GP.

And he said, we've got your results back.

And I said, oh, good, good, good.

I said, so we can stop this now?

And he went, no.

And I said, oh.

I said, what is it?

And he says, you have what looks like multiple sclerosis.

STEVEN: It's an awful disease that Paul's got now.

It was shocking and very sad.

You know, it was as if-- that's just not-- it's just not fair.

- Not lucky, no.

- That's how we felt.

We were thinking, oh, he'll never play again because this is terrible.

PAUL: Piano was my passion.

I can lock myself off from the entire world in a protective bubble almost.

Everything else goes dark.

It was me and the piano, nothing else.

["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] STEPHEN HOUGH: And so the piece ends with this extraordinary moment, which would have torn the strings from Chopin's piano at the time.

This is music of rage, of despair.

LANG LANG: In the end, it's so not clear whether it's a victory.

It kind of leave to us, leave to the performer, to the audience, you know.

It's kind of without a result, that kind of ending.

VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY: That's how it had to be.

Inevitability in music is so important very often, so you react to it and think, that's right.

That's all you can say.

LANG LANG: The story is not finished yet.

It just kind of stops somewhere.

[final note reverberates] [distant siren wailing] PAUL: Part of my head was like, give up.

But another part of my head, the bigger portion of my head said, no, let's go ahead with this.

Left-handed is what you're meant to do.

Left-handed is almost as if you've been gifted this.

I mean, I'm still here.

Let's continue with what I've got, and what I've got is a very strong left hand.

So let's go and become as great a pianist as I can with just using one hand.

[playing notes] At the moment, I'm taking the "Ballade" and rewriting it as one hand, restructuring it as one hand.

I feel that I have a connection with this piece.

And being paralyzed, I have almost been robbed of the pleasure of being able to play the "Ballade."

And I'm not OK with that.

I want to always be able to play that piece.

So, in two months' time, I'm going to play a concert.

[piano music] NIGEL CLAYTON: I would write that as a semibreve across the top, and then that will encourage you to play that less strongly, because in the original, that's just the accompaniment.

So you need to put that-- you need to break that one up.

- E. - When you do the beginning, it's quite strong.

[single low note] PAUL: I'm having lessons in London under the direction of Nigel Clayton at the Royal College of Music.

- And then when you come away at the end, make an incredible atmosphere just at the end of that.

You're very inventive about ideas, really well done.

And then two, three, five on these three, yeah.

- I think it's pushing the limits of the five fingers, definitely.

- Definitely, God, you're telling me.

Never mind, you wait till we get to the coda.

- Oh, yeah, that'll be fun.

[laughter] - Can you just do it one more time?

- Yes.

- Remembering to tie-- [playing notes] Da-da.

Then the chord of the eighth.

Then ta-da, yes.

Spread, spread, spread.

Good boy.

IMOGEN COOPER: If you're going through a traumatic time yourself, you would forge a relationship with the Chopin "G Minor Ballade."

You can feel very trapped and alone in this alien and unfamiliar inner landscape with a strong need to be able to identify with something, with somebody, whereby you can say not so much, yes, all will be well, as, yes, this is how it is, complete with darkness, fear, relentlessness.

["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] I think it's actually grasping the darkness and saying, I can yet make something of this.

If Chopin could with such beauty, then through my life, I will be able to do it, too.

STEPHEN HOUGH: Beneath Chopin's "Ballade," there is a limitless abyss of richness to explore.

It does touch things, I think, inside, which we only begin to discover as we get older.

And it's an element of nostalgia, I think, an element of regret, of joy, all those memories mixed together, everything that is contained in that human experience.

And this is what makes this piece a great work of art.

VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY: Without what we call great music, my existence and many other people's existence would be very poor.

We should always remember that as animalistic as we are-- and, of course, we are animals-- we have a dimension that animals don't have.

And that is the spiritual dimension.

And music is an inseparable part of that entity.

Chopin is on such a spiritual level that it's difficult to find a parallel to that.

[birds chirping] ["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] PAUL: Today I will be performing the work I have done so far on Chopin's "Ballade in G Minor."

My family will be here.

Some friends will be here from the university and my girlfriend.

I have mixed feelings.

I'm excited.

I'm nervous, and I'm scared.

["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] DEBBIE: He's never complained.

Just gets up and fights constant.

I'm so proud of him, really, really, really.

STEVEN: I would hope everything for Paul.

I hope that he does something in music and just enjoys his life doing it.

If he smiles, that's enough, I think.

You don't want any more than that, do you?

I just want him to smile.

He smiled all the time.

I just want him to smile.

I'm happy with that.

DEBBIE: Yep.

[cheers and applause] PAUL: I got to the state where I couldn't quite understand music anymore.

I couldn't tell you where A or B flat on a piano was.

Being partially impaired does not mean music has to stop.

There's no way to say that that's the end of your life.

That's not the end of your life.

It's just something else that's happened.

I'm not saying it's happened for a reason.

It's just happened, and let's see... how I can deal with it.

And when it came to the "Ballade," I can look at that piece and say, the "Ballade" saved me.

["BALLADE NO.

1 IN G MINOR" PLAYING] (Music Continues) (Music Ends)