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It is a companion to his equally sensational description of the Polonaise. He gives a wild, whirling, highly-colored narrative of the Mazurka, with a coda of extravagant praise of the beauty and fascination of Polish women. "Angel through love, demon through fantasy," as Balzac called her.
After sixteen bars of a crudely harmonized tutti comes the Polonaise in the widely remote key of E flat; it is brilliant, every note telling, the figuration rich and novel, the movement spirited and flowing. Perhaps it is too long and lacks relief. The theme on each re-entrance is varied ornamentally. The second theme, in C minor, has a Polish and poetic ring, while the coda is effective.
There was no "form" no statement of first and second subject, no working-out section measured off with compass and ruler, no recapitulation and coda; and mid-nineteenth century ears and brains were utterly baffled. The thematic luxuriance, the richness of the part-weaving, the blazing brilliance of the colouring these were a mere vexation; and the volcanic energy was quickly found exhausting.
In the coda there is a reminder of the first movement, and the whole thing ends in a blaze of fireworks. On the occasion of its first performance in Cincinnati, in 1889, Robert I. Carter wrote: "It is preëminently a symphonic work, in which the piano is used as a voice in the orchestra, and used with consummate skill. The charm of the work lies in its simplicity.
The music seemed to fascinate him, to paralyse his will, even as the sphex paralyses its victim with its sting. The organist was now engaged upon the coda of his fugue; the former motifs were rehearsed love, sorrow, and revenge.
It swung itself into the higher register, where it came to a stop before A major, just as the introduction stopped before C major. Then, after the theme has once more presented itself in a modified form variant it comes under the pestle of an extremely figurate coda, which demands the study of an artist, the strength of a robust man the most vigorous pianistic health, in a word!
His determined nationalism is responsible for his festival overture, "The American Flag," based on his own setting of Rodman Drake's familiar poem. The work opens with the hymn blaring loudly from the antiphonal brass and wood. The subjects are taken from it with much thematic skill, and handled artfully, but the hymn, which appears in full force for coda, is as trite as the most of its kith.
The old manner in church music, that Bach often used, of closing a minor tonality with a major chord, was probably due to a regard for the mood of the congregation. An extension of this tradition is frequent in a long coda in the major. But this is quite different in kind from a plan where all of the last movement is in insistent major.
The different movements of the symphony are, however, not thematically related, save that the coda of the last movement is a reminiscence of the auxiliary theme of the first movement. The andante, in which the 'cellos are very lyrical, is a tender and musing mood. The presto is flashing with life and has a trio of rollicking, even whooping, jubilation.
The C sharp minor theme is of lyric beauty, the coda with its scales, brilliant. It seems to be banned by classicists and Chopin worshippers alike. The agnostic attitude is not yet dead in the piano playing world. Rubinstein most admired the first two Scherzi. The B minor has been criticised for being too much in the etude vein.
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