Emphatically a mood, it is best heard on a gray day of
the soul, when the times are out of joint; its silken tones will
bring a triste content as they pour out upon one's hearing. The
second section in octaves is of exceeding charm. As a melody it
has all the lurking voluptuousness and mystic crooning of its
composer. There is flux and reflux throughout, passion peeping
out in the coda.
The E flat nocturne is graceful, shallow of content, but if it is
played with purity of touch and freedom from sentimentality it is
not nearly so banal as it usually seems. It is Field-like,
therefore play it as did Rubinstein, in a Field-like fashion.
Hadow calls attention to the "remote and recondite modulations"
in the twelfth bar, the chromatic double notes. For him they only
are one real modulation, "the rest of the passage is an
iridescent play of color, an effect of superficies, not an effect
of substance." It was the E flat nocturne that unloosed
Rellstab's critical wrath in the "Iris." Of it he wrote: "Where
Field smiles, Chopin makes a grinning grimace; where Field sighs,
Chopin groans; where Field shrugs his shoulders, Chopin twists
his whole body; where Field puts some seasoning into the food,
Chopin empties a handful of cayenne pepper.
Pages:
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271