The D flat Trio is a logical relief after the booming and glooming of the opening.  That it is “a rapturous gaze into the beatific regions of a beyond,” as Niecks writes, I am not prepared to say.  We do know, however, that the march, when isolated, has a much more profound effect than in its normal sequence.  The presto is too wonderful for words.  Rubinstein, or was it originally Tausig who named it “Night winds sweeping over the churchyard graves”?  Its agitated, whirring, unharmonized triplets are strangely disquieting, and can never be mistaken for mere etude passage work.  The movement is too sombre, its curves too full of half-suppressed meanings, its rush and sub-human growling too expressive of something that defies definition.  Schumann compares it to a “sphinx with a mocking smile.”  To Henri Barbadette “C’est Lazare grattant de ses ongles la pierre de son tombeau,” or, like Mendelssohn, one may abhor it, yet it cannot be ignored.  It has Asiatic coloring, and to me seems like the wavering outlines of light-tipped hills seen sharply en silhouette, behind which rises and falls a faint, infernal glow.  This art paints as many differing pictures as there are imaginations for its sonorous background; not alone the universal solvent, as Henry James thinks, it bridges the vast, silent gulfs between human souls with its humming eloquence.  This sonata is not dedicated.

The third Sonata in B minor, op. 58, has more of that undefinable “organic unity,” yet, withal, it is not so powerful, so pathos-breeding or so compact of thematic interest as its forerunner.  The first page, to the chromatic chords of the sixth, promises much.  There is a clear statement, a sound theme for developing purposes, the crisp march of chord progressions, and then—­the edifice goes up in smoke.  After wreathings and curlings of passage work, and on the rim of despair, we witness the exquisite budding of the melody in D. It is an aubade, a nocturne of the morn—­if the contradictory phrase be allowed.  There is morning freshness in its hue and scent, and, when it bursts, a parterre of roses.  The close of the section is inimitable.  All the more sorrow at what follows:  wild disorder and the luxuriance called tropical.  When B major is compassed we sigh, for it augurs us a return of delight.  The ending is not that of a sonata, but a love lyric.  For Chopin is not the cool breadth and marmoreal majesty of blank verse.  He sonnets to perfection, but the epical air does not fill his nostrils.

Vivacious, charming, light as a harebell in the soft breeze is the Scherzo in E flat.  It has a clear ring of the scherzo and harks back to Weber in its impersonal, amiable hurry.  The largo is tranquilly beautiful, rich in its reverie, lovely in its tune.  The trio is reserved and hypnotic.  The last movement, with its brilliancy and force, is a favorite, but it lacks weight, and the entire sonata is, as Niecks writes, “affiliated, but not cognate.”  It was published June, 1845, and is dedicated to Comtesse E. de Perthuis.