Niecks truthfully calls the fourth prelude in E minor “a little poem, the exquisitely sweet, languid pensiveness of which defies description.  The composer seems to be absorbed in the narrow sphere of his ego, from which the wide, noisy world is for the time shut out.”  Willeby finds this prelude to be “one of the most beautiful of these spontaneous sketches; for they are no more than sketches.  The melody seems literally to wail, and reaches its greatest pitch of intensity at the stretto.”  For Karasowski it is a “real gem, and alone would immortalize the name of Chopin as a poet.”  It must have been this number that impelled Rubinstein to assert that the Preludes were the pearls of his works.  In the Klindworth edition, fifth bar from the last, the editor has filled in the harmonies to the first six notes of the left hand, added thirds, which is not reprehensible, although uncalled for.  Kullak makes some new dynamic markings and several enharmonic changes.  He also gives as metronome 69 to the quarter.  This tiny prelude contains wonderful music.  The grave reiteration of the theme may have suggested to Peter Cornelius his song “Ein Ton.”  Chopin expands a melodic unit, and one singularly pathetic.  The whole is like some canvas by Rembrandt, Rembrandt who first dramatized the shadow in which a single motif is powerfully handled; some sombre effect of echoing light in the profound of a Dutch interior.  For background Chopin has substituted his soul; no one in art, except Bach or Rembrandt, could paint as Chopin did in this composition.  Its despair has the antique flavor, and there is a breadth, nobility and proud submission quite free from the tortured, whimpering complaint of the second prelude.  The picture is small, but the subject looms large in meanings.

The fifth prelude in D is Chopin at his happiest.  Its arabesque pattern conveys a most charming content; and there is a dewy freshness, a joy in life, that puts to flight much of the morbid tittle-tattle about Chopin’s sickly soul.  The few bars of this prelude, so seldom heard in public, reveal musicianship of the highest order.  The harmonic scheme is intricate; Klindworth phrases the first four bars so as to bring out the alternate B and B flat.  It is Chopin spinning his finest, his most iridescent web.

The next prelude, the sixth, in B minor, is doleful, pessimistic.  As George Sand says:  “It precipitates the soul into frightful depression.”  It is the most frequently played—­and oh! how meaninglessly—­prelude of the set; this and the one in D flat.  Classical is its repression of feeling, its pure contour.  The echo effect is skilfully managed, monotony being artfully avoided.  Klindworth rightfully slurs the duple group of eighths; Kullak tries for the same effect by different means.  The duality of the voices should be clearly expressed.  The tempo, marked in both editions, lento assai, is fast.  To be precise, Klindworth gives 66 to the quarter.