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Updated: May 8, 2025
Lind, who was present at the first, seems to be the most enthusiastic. We were not present at either, and, therefore, have nothing to say on the subject. From an account of the first matinee in the Athenaeum we learn that Chopin played nocturnes, etudes, mazurkas, two waltzes, and the Berceuse, but none of his more developed works, such as sonatas, concertos, scherzos, and ballades.
In short, Wagner can be quoted against himself almost without limit, much as Beethoven's adagios could be quoted against his scherzos if a dispute arose between two fools as to whether he was a melancholy man or a merry one.
"Some pieces with special titles are notoriously misnamed and carry no possible means of definitely intimating what the composer intended. Even some forms are misleading in their names. The Scherzos of Chopin are often very remote from the playful significance of the word a significance which is beautifully preserved in the Scherzos of Mendelssohn.
More than to any one of the master's scherzos, the name capriccio would be suitable to his third "Scherzo," Op. 39, with its capricious starts and changes, its rudderless drifting. Peevishness, a fierce scornfulness, and a fretful agitation, may be heard in these sounds, of jest and humour there is nothing perceptible.
But at the very height of his rising ardour he suddenly plunges back into that wild, self-surrendering, heaven and earth- forgetting joyousness a stroke of genius as delightful as it is clever. If we do not understand by the name of scherzo a fixed form, but rather a state of mind, we may say that Chopin's waltzes are his scherzos and not the pieces to which he has given that name. And no wonder!
To shut him up I told him that he would find cigarettes and tobacco on the table. "'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'!" he chuckled again as he took a cigarette.... All this, perhaps, needs some explanation. It had been the usual thing, usual in those days, twenty years ago smarming about Art and the Arts and so forth.
Men who have wrestled with the demons of hell do not tumble around like elephants, no matter how happy they are. I wish I could take out Beethoven's scherzos! My heart leaps when I think of my one big step. I have put those pages away I shall not look at them again for a month. Then I can judge them. April 13th. A cable-car conductor and a poet! I think that will be a story worth telling.
The orchestra was perfect, at its best I think in the "scherzos" which they took in beautiful style so light and sure. I liked the instrumental part much better than the singing. French voices, the women's particularly, are thin, as a rule. I think they sacrifice too much to the "diction," don't bring out the voices enough but the style and training are perfect of their kind.
We meet with breathings of stifled rage, of suppressed anger, in many passages of his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant hauteur.
If it were our intention to discuss the development of Piano music in the language of the Schools, we would dissect his magnificent pages, which afford so rich a field for scientific observation. We would, in the first place, analyze his Nocturnes, Ballades, Impromptus, Scherzos, which are full of refinements of harmony never heard before; bold, and of startling originality.
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