The Adagio is very fine in its way, but such is
its cloying sweetness that one longs for something bracing and active.
This desire the composer satisfies only partially in the last movement
(Rondo vivace, 2-4, E major). Nevertheless, he succeeds in putting us
in good humour by his gaiety, pretty ways, and tricksy surprises (for
instance, the modulations from E major to E flat major, and back again
to E major). We seem, however, rather to look on the play of fantoccini
than the doings of men; in short, we feel here what we have felt more or
less strongly throughout the whole work--there is less intensity of
life and consequently less of human interest in this than in the F minor
Concerto.

Almost all my remarks on the concertos run counter to those made by W.
von Lenz. The F minor Concerto he holds to be an uninteresting
work, immature and fragmentary in plan, and, excepting some delicate
ornamentation, without originality. Nay, he goes even so far as to say
that the passage-work is of the usual kind met with in the compositions
of Hummel and his successors, and that the cantilena in the larghetto
is in the jejune style of Hummel; the last movement also receives but
scanty and qualified praise. On the other hand, he raves about the E
minor Concerto, confining himself, however, to the first movement. The
second movement he calls a "tiresome nocturne," the Rondo "a Hummel."
A tincture of classical soberness and self-possession in the first
movement explains Lenz's admiration of this composition, but I fail to
understand the rest of his predilections and critical utterances.

In considering these concertos one cannot help exclaiming--What a pity
that Chopin should have set so many beautiful thoughts and fancies in
such a frame and thereby marred them! They contain passages which are
not surpassed in any of his most perfect compositions, yet among them
these concertos cannot be reckoned. It is difficult to determine their
rank in concerto literature. The loveliness, brilliancy, and piquancy
of the details bribe us to overlook, and by dazzling us even prevent
us from seeing, the formal shortcomings of the whole. But be their
shortcomings ever so great and many, who would dispense with these
works? Therefore, let us be thankful, and enjoy them without much
grumbling.

Schumann in writing of the concertos said that Chopin introduced
Beethoven spirit [Beethovenischen Geist] into the concert-room, dressing
the master's thought