hat Chopin ever played it as intended is
incredible; none but the heroes of the keyboard may grasp its dense
chordal masses, its fiery projectiles of tone. But there is something
disturbing, even ghostly, in the strange intermezzo that separates the
trio from the polonaise. Both mist and starlight are in it. Yet the
work is played too fast, and has been nicknamed the "Drum" Polonaise,
losing in majesty and force because of the vanity of virtuosi. The
octaves in E major are spun out as if speed were the sole idea of this
episode. Follow Kleczynski's advice and do not sacrifice the Polonaise
to the octaves. Karl Tausig, so Joseffy and de Lenz assert, played this
Polonaise in an unapproachable manner. Powerful battle tableau as it
is, it may still be presented so as not to shock one's sense of the
euphonious, of the limitations of the instrument. This work becomes
vapid and unheroic when transferred to the orchestra.

The Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat, op. 61, given to the world
September, 1846, is dedicated to Madame A. Veyret. One of three great
Polonaises, it is just beginning to be understood, having been derided
as amorphous, febrile, of little musical moment, even Liszt declaring
that "such pictures possess but little real value to art. ...
Deplorable visions which the artist should admit with extreme
circumspection within the graceful circle of his charmed realm." This
was written in the old-fashioned days, when art was aristocratic and
excluded the "baser" and more painful emotions. For a generation
accustomed to the realism of Richard Strauss, the Fantaisie-Polonaise
seems vaporous and idealistic, withal new. It recalls one of those
enchanted flasks of the magii from which on opening smoke exhales that
gradually shapes itself into fantastic and fearsome figures. This
Polonaise at no time exhibits the solidity of its two predecessors; its
plasticity defies the imprint of the conventional Polonaise, though we
ever feel its rhythms. It may be full of monologues, interspersed
cadenzas, improvised preludes and short phrases, as Kullak suggests,
yet there is unity in the composition, the units of structure and
style. It was music of the future when Chopin composed; it is now music
of the present, as much as Richard Wagner's. But the realism is a
trifle clouded. Here is the duality of Chopin the suffering man and
Chopin the prophet of Poland. Undimmed is his poetic vision--Poland
will be free!--undaunted his soul, though