What is your opinion on the use of Rubato in Valse Op 64 No 2-especially in the passage work. I know someone who says that it should be played without any-But a waltz without Rubato just sounds a little off to me.

Also, is this piece actually supposed to be difficult (like Grade wise i know its no Licenciate level), many have told me it is-but i learnt it in a coupla weeks playing it now and again.

Technically I don't think it's one of the harder works by Chopin, but it's so hard to musically interprete it in the right way. I learnt this piece about a year ago, and I still can't play it musically as I want.
For the rubato, of course you can use a little rubato. What becomes annoying is too much rubato. I wouldn't use too much rubato in the main section and nearly no rubato in the passages (doesn't mean you shouldn't change tempo, but when you've "found" your tempo I'd stick to it, you can also vary the tempo for the 3 times the passages come back, e.g. first time slow, second time faster and thrid time fastest, or first time medium, second time fast and thrid time slow, whatever you can think of). I use more rubato in the piu lento section.

Listen to pianists. Great waltz performers are Dinu Lipatti and Arthur Rubinstein.

To the question of difficulty<:

The difficultiest bars are in my opinion right in the beginning, bars 3/4 and 7/8 and parallel parts. I never did it satisfactorly for my teacher, 30 years or so ago...
If you are able to play those easy looking bars precise and correctly with ALL notes, than the rest is more or less easy going. The B part sounds difficult but with good fingering it is not that difficult.

Good luck with this beautiful waltz!

Self believe it is written at the top of this valtz

to play with steady tempo


Could be wrong


Been a long while since looking over the score