op. 29, is, if one is pinned down to the
title, the happiest named of the set. Its seething, prankish, nimble,
bubbling quality is indicated from the start; the D natural in the
treble against the C and E flat--the dominant--in the bass is a most
original effect, and the flowing triplets of the first part of this
piece give a ductile, gracious, high-bred character to it. The
chromatic involutions are many and interesting. When the F minor part
is reached the ear experiences the relief of a strongly contrasted
rhythm. The simple duple measure, so naturally ornamented, is nobly,
broadly melodious. After the return of the first dimpling theme there
is a short coda, a chiaroscura, and then with a few chords the
composition goes to rest. A bird flew that way! Rubato should be
employed, for, as Kleczynski says, "Here everything totters from
foundation to summit, and everything is, nevertheless, so beautiful and
so clear." But only an artist with velvety fingers should play this
sounding arabesque.

There is more limpidezza, more pure grace of line in the first
Impromptu than in the second in F sharp, op. 36. Here symmetry is
abandoned, as Kullak remarks, but the compensation of intenser
emotional issues is offered. There is something sphinx-like in the pose
of this work. Its nocturnal beginning with the carillon-like bass--a
bass that ever recalls to me the faint, buried tones of Hauptmann's
"Sunken Bell," the sweetly grave close of the section, the faint
hoof-beats of an approaching cavalcade, with the swelling thunders of
its passage, surely suggests a narrative, a programme. After the D
major episode there are two bars of anonymous modulation--these bars
creak on their hinges--and the first subject reappears in F, then
climbs to F sharp, thence merges into a glittering melodic organ-point,
exciting, brilliant, the whole subsiding into an echo of earlier
harmonies. The final octaves are marked fortissimo which always seems
brutal. Yet its logic lies in the scheme of the composer. Perhaps he
wished to arouse us harshly from his dreamland, as was his habit while
improvising for friends--a glissando would send them home shivering
after an evening of delicious reverie.

Niecks finds this Impromptu lacking the pith of the first. To me it is
of more moment than the other three. It is irregular and wavering in
outline, the moods are wandering and capricious, yet who dares deny its
power, its beauty? In its use of accessory figur