Whenever I play lately the 2nd Ballade of Chopin my mind wanders to this movie and picture of "Drag me to hell.” I was recently explaining how I imagined the fast theme as a descent to hell coming from the right hand and the movement of the devil coming up to grab its prey from the left hand. (I was listened to with a mix of amusement and incredulity.) Today I checked with an edition I rarely work with, and which is extremely interesting, written by Cortot. He writes in his preface that Schumann got it directly from Chopin that these Ballades were inspired by poems of Adam Mickiewicz and the second Ballade in particular by the poem “The Switez”. The ballades’ story is about a lake near a polish city once destroyed by the Russians. The legend tells that the young polish girls, in order to avoid the shame awaiting them from their conquerors, asked to be swallowed by the earth which suddenly opened under their feet, and they were turned into these strange flowers on the lake’s borders. Unfortunate be the one who touches them!