Impromptu in G flat, Op.51

Chopin did not take the impromptu very seriously. In the Impromptu No.1 in A flat, Op.29, he evidently had no misgivings about repeating the formula he had discovered in the work we now know as the Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op.66, and - after a departure in a different direction in the Impromptu No.2 in F sharp, Op.36 - he returned to the early pattern in the Impromptu No.3 in G flat major, Op.51. The triplet figuration of the outer sections of Op.51 is clearly based on that of Op.29, but it does discovers its own kind of chromatic frisson and the left-hand melodic line of the central sostenuto is developed with true improvisatory eloquence. Written at Nohant in 1842, in the same summer as the Fourth Ballade and the Fourth Scherzo, the Impromptu in G flat is clearly not as ambitious as either of those works but it is more than the “occasional piece” modestly dismissed by the composer himself.