Impromptu, op. 29, is, if one is pinned down to the title, the happiest named of the set.  Its seething, prankish, nimble, bubbling quality is indicated from the start; the D natural in the treble against the C and E flat—­the dominant—­in the bass is a most original effect, and the flowing triplets of the first part of this piece give a ductile, gracious, high-bred character to it.  The chromatic involutions are many and interesting.  When the F minor part is reached the ear experiences the relief of a strongly contrasted rhythm.  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.  After the D major episode there are two bars of anonymous modulation—­these bars creak on their hinges—­ and the first subject reappears in F, then climbs to F sharp, thence merges into a glittering melodic organ-point, exciting, brilliant, the whole subsiding into an echo of earlier harmonies.  The final octaves are marked fortissimo which always seems brutal.  Yet its logic lies in the scheme of the composer.  Perhaps he wished to arouse us harshly from his dreamland, as was his habit while improvising for friends—­a glissando would send them home shivering after an evening of delicious reverie.

Niecks finds this Impromptu lacking the pith of the first.  To me it is of more moment than the other three.  It is irregular and wavering in outline, the moods are wandering and capricious, yet who dares deny its power, its beauty?  In its use of accessory figures it does not reveal so much ingenuity, but just because the “figure in the carpet” is not so varied in pattern, its passion is all the deeper.  It is another Ballade, sadder, more meditative of the tender grace of vanished days.