Bourrées, B.160
Romantic Bourrée Piano solo ~2 min
In brief

These Bourrées are lively and dance-like yet threaded with lyrical folds where the pulse relaxes to let the melody breathe; you feel both the dance drive and moments of more songful return. Technically, you will need to work on Tempo rubato (3.1/5) by practising local flexibility using micro-adjustments of the wrist and arm to slightly delay or hasten the melodic line without breaking the accompaniment, and on the Sustain pedal (3.1/5) which requires clear, well-timed pedalling changes aligned with phrasing to avoid harmonic blurring. The piece belongs to Chopin’s Romantic period and sits among his salon pieces drawing on traditional dance forms, illustrating his taste for melodic transformation within short forms.

MusicCoach difficulty
55/100
Intermediate
Likely range : 43–67/100
Confidence : 35% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 6

Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.

Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.

Where this work sits
050100

Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.

The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.

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Relative difficulty
30%
Among Frédéric Chopin
44%
Era Romantic
75%
Genre
Estimated skills
Pedaling
Sustain pedal
1
Style
Romantic style
1
Rhythm
Tempo rubato
1
Technique
Legato
1
Interpretation
Dynamics
1
What to play next?

Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.

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