![]() The Trio section provides a drastic contrast, changing to the key of the relative major and featuring one of Chopin’s many lyrical melodies. Chiefly motivic with an unsettling rhythm, it proceeds on with an almost devilish fury. The fiery Scherzo second movement changes to the key of E-flat minor. ![]() Because of this, a full reprise of the first theme is avoided in the recapitulation and the development instead leads into a return of the second theme in the key of B-flat major, in which key the movement concludes. The principal theme dominates the complex development section, although, the second theme does make its presence known in the form of triplet quarter notes against the principal theme’s eighth-note rhythms. Offsetting the agitato principal theme is a lyrical second subject in D-flat major, embodying a yearning expectation. Though a master of the miniature, he was more than capable in handling the highest and profoundest of musical forms. After only four measures, however, Chopin breaks into the turbulent first theme of the sonata form movement. The first movement opens with a brief Grave introduction and a descending diminished seventh reminiscent of Beethoven’s last piano sonata. Robert Schumann, who typically praised Chopin as one of the foremost artists of the early Romantic era, failed to find a sense of cohesion between the movements of the sonata remarking that Chopin “had simply bound together four of his most unruly children.” Even until present times, the work’s internal logic has remained somewhat of enigma. Although a valiant attempt at the large-scale structures that any extensive multi-movement work demands, the Second Sonata confounded many listeners. ![]() The famous Funeral March that forms the third movement and gives the sonata its nickname was actually composed two years earlier in 1837. ![]() 2 in B-flat was primarily composed in 1839. Chopin’s second attempt at the genre, though first to be published, the Piano Sonata No. ![]()
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