autiful music; but we pardon the master his wild fantasies, for once
he may let us see also the dark sides of his inner life."

The Allegro de Concert, Op. 46, which was published in November, 1841,
although written for the pianoforte alone, contains, nevertheless,
passages which are more distinctly orchestral than anything Chopin
ever wrote for the orchestra. The form resembles somewhat that of the
concerto. In the first section, which occupies the place of the
opening tutti, we cannot fail to distinguish the entrances of single
instruments, groups of instruments, and the full orchestra. The soloist
starts in the eighty-seventh bar, and in the following commences a
cadenza. With the a tempo comes the first subject (A major), and the
passage-work which brings up the rear leads to the second subject (E
major), which had already appeared in the first section in A major.
The first subject, if I may dignify the matter in question with that
designation, does not recur again, nor was it introduced by the tutti.
The central and principal thought is what I called the second subject.
The second section concludes with brilliant passage-work in E major, the
time--honoured shake rousing the drowsy orchestra from its sweet
repose. The hint is not lost, and the orchestra, in the disguise of the
pianoforte, attends to its duty right vigorously. With the poco rit. the
soloist sets to work again, and in the next bar takes up the principal
subject in A minor. After that we have once more brilliant passage-work,
closing this time in A major, and then a final tutti. The Allegro de
Concert gives rise to all sorts of surmises. Was it written first for
the pianoforte and orchestra, as Schumann suspects? Or may we make even
a bolder guess, and suppose that the composer, at a more advanced age,
worked up into this Allegro de Concert a sketch for the first movement
of a concerto conceived in his younger days? Have we, perhaps, here a
fragment or fragments of the Concerto for two pianos which Chopin, in
a letter written at Vienna on December 21, 1830, said he would play in
public with his friend Nidecki, if he succeeded in writing it to his
satisfaction? And is there any significance in the fact that Chopin,
when (probably in the summer of 1841) sending the manuscript of this
work to Fontana, calls it a Concerto? Be this as it may, the principal
subject and some of the passage-work remind one of the time of the
concertos; other things, again, belo