, and more native
sweetness in this E flat minor Scherzo. I like the way Kullak marks the
first B flat octave. It is a pregnant beginning. The second bar I have
never heard from any pianist save Rubinstein given with the proper
crescendo. No one else seems to get it explosive enough within the
walls of one bar. It is a true Rossin-ian crescendo. And in what a wild
country we are landed when the F sharp minor is crashed out! Stormy
chromatic double notes, chords of the sixth, rush on with incredible
fury, and the scherzo ends on the very apex of passion. A Trio in G
flat is the song of songs, its swaying rhythms and phrase-echoings
investing a melody at once sensuous and chaste. The second part and the
return to the scherzo are proofs of the composer's sense of balance and
knowledge of the mysteries of anticipation. The closest parallelisms
are noticeable, the technique so admirable that the scherzo floats in
mid-air--Flaubert's ideal of a miraculous style.

And then follows that deadly Marche Funebre! Ernest Newman, in his
remarkable "Study of Wagner," speaks of the fundamental difference
between the two orders of imagination, as exemplified by Beethoven and
Chopin on the one side, Wagner on the other. This regarding the funeral
marches of the three. Newman finds Wagner's the more concrete
imagination; the "inward picture" of Beethoven, and Chopin "much vaguer
and more diffused." Yet Chopin is seldom so realistic; here are the
bell-like basses, the morbid coloring. Schumann found "it contained
much that is repulsive," and Liszt raves rhapsodically over it; for
Karasowski it was the "pain and grief of an entire nation," while
Ehlert thinks "it owes its renown to the wonderful effect of two
triads, which in their combination possess a highly tragical element.
The middle movement is not at all characteristic. Why could it not at
least have worn second mourning? After so much black crepe drapery one
should not at least at once display white lingerie!" This is cruel.

The D flat Trio is a logical relief after the booming and glooming of
the opening. That it is "a rapturous gaze into the beatific regions of
a beyond," as Niecks writes, I am not prepared to say. We do know,
however, that the march, when isolated, has a much more profound effect
than in its normal sequence. The presto is too wonderful for words.
Rubinstein, or was it originally Tausig who named it "Night winds
sweeping over the churchyard graves"? Its agitated