The piece presents difficulties, chiefly rhythmical.
Its involuted first phrases suggest the Bellini-an fioriture so
dear to Chopin, but the D flat part is without nobility. Here is
the same kind of saccharine melody that makes mawkish the trio in
the "Marche Funebre." There seems no danger that this Fantaisie-
Impromptu will suffer from neglect, for it is the joy of the
piano student, who turns its presto into a slow, blurred mess of
badly related rhythms, and its slower movement into a long drawn
sentimental agony; but in the hands of a master the C sharp minor
Impromptu is charming, though not of great depth.
The first Impromptu, dedicated to Mlle. la Comtesse de Lobau, was
published December, 1837; the second, May, 1840; the third,
dedicated to Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy, February, 1843. Not
one of these four Impromptus is as naive as Schubert's; they are
more sophisticated and do not smell of nature and her
simplicities.
Of the Chopin Valses it has been said that they are dances of the
soul and not of the body. Their animated rhythms, insouciant airs
and brilliant, coquettish atmosphere, the true atmosphere of the
ballroom, seem to smile at Ehlert's poetic exaggeration.
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