Chopin: Scherzo No.2 in B -flat minor, Op.31

Music for piano

Olga Jegunova

The Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 is a scherzo by Frédéric Chopin. The work was composed and published in 1837, and was dedicated to Countess Adèle Fürstenstein. Robert Schumann compared this scherzo to a Byronic poem, "so overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt." According to Wilhelm von Lenz, a pupil of Chopin, the composer said that the renowned sotto voce opening was a question and the second phrase the answer: "For Chopin it was never questioning enough, never soft enough, never vaulted (tombe) enough. It must be a charnel-house." Huneker exults, "What masterly writing, and it lies in the very heart of the piano! A hundred generations may not improve on these pages."
The beginning is marked Presto and opens in B flat minor. However, most of the work is written in D flat major. The opening to the piece consists of two arpeggiated pianissimo chords, and after a moment's pause, goes into a set of fortissimo chords, before returning to the quiet arpeggiated chords. The piece then goes to an arpeggio section which leads to the con anima. Then, the middle section appears in A major. After the middle section ends (modulating in B flat minor), the first section reappears with a coda.
Olga Jegunova aroused to notability with her Youtube recording of Mozart's K331 piano sonata. She was studying music at Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, concluding with a bachelor's degree, she obtained her master's degree at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. This was followed by studying at the Royal College of Music (Artist Diploma course as an RCM scholar under Dmitri Alexeev) and then at the Royal Northern College of Music where her piano teacher was Norma Fisher. 
Jegunova won the Concours Musical de France Ginette Gaubert in Paris and in 2008 the Steinway-Förderpreis in Hamburg. In 2016 she was accepted by Steinway & Sons as a Steinway Artist. She has been a prize-winner at the Concours International de Piano Maryse Cheilan in France, at the Stasys Vainiūnas competition in Vilnius and at the competition of the foundation Animato in Zurich, and was a semi-finalist at the prestigious Concours Géza Anda in Zurich.
Since 2009, Jegunova has worked as a performer for Live Music Now, a charity providing live music in the concert hall as well as in the welfare, educational, justice and health sectors. She teaches piano to students of Queen Mary University of London.