Nocturne in E flat major, Op.55, No.2

What is most remarkable about the Op.55 pair of Nocturnes - and most of Chopin’s Nocturnes were published in pairs - is not that they are both dedicated to the composer’s Scottish pupil and admirer Jane Stirling nor even that the first is one of the shortest and the second one of the longest, although duration does have something to do with it. The point is that the Nocturne in F minor, Op.55, No.1, is probably the most popular in the series - mainly because it is, for the most part, so accessible to pianists of modest technique - while the Nocturne in E flat, Op.55, No.2, is surely the most inspired and perhaps also the most difficult. The Nocturne in E flat is not analyzable in the ternary terms which can be applied to most of the others. It is a continuous, effortlessly spontaneous development of one theme which is more beautifully and more meaningfully decorated than any of its kind. At the same time it is abundant in a kind of counterpoint which, having everything to do with melodic imagination and nothing to do with academic precedence, is unique to Chopin.