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.
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