The walls stand
firm despite the hurricane blowing through and around them.
Ehlert finds this Scherzo tornadic. It is gusty, and the hurry
and over-emphasis do not endear it to the pianist. The first
pages are filled with wrathful sounds, there is much tossing of
hands and cries to heaven, calling down its fire and brimstone. A
climax mounts to a fine frenzy until the lyric intermezzo in B is
reached. Here love chants with honeyed tongues. The widely
dispersed figure of the melody has an entrancing tenderness. But
peace does not long prevail against the powers of Eblis, and
infernal is the Wilde Jagd of the finale. After shrillest of
dissonances, a chromatic uproar pilots the doomed one across this
desperate Styx.
What Chopin's programme was we can but guess. He may have
outlined the composition in a moment of great ebullition, a time
of soul laceration arising from a cat scratch or a quarrel with
Maurice Sand in the garden over the possession of the goat cart.
The Klindworth edition is preferable. Kullak follows his example
in using the double note stems in the B major part.
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