Klavierstücke d946

Klavierstück in E flat major D946 No.2 (1828)

The three pieces published forty years after the composer’s death as Drei Klavierstücke were written in May 1828, possibly with the intention of adding one more to make a third set of four Impromptus. Bearing in mind how cautious Haslinger had been about publishing the first two sets, withholding all but two of the eight Impromptus he had at his disposal, he would probably not have extended a warm welcome to a third set including a piece as harmonically adventurous and as structurally complicated as this Allegretto in E flat major.

The E flat major opening section has the gentle flow of a Mendelssohn Gondellied. But then the key changes to C minor, the left hand rumbles at a distance, the right hand shivers in parallel thirds and punches out chords in contradiction of the prevailing 6/8 metre. It is a stormy episode that develops in dramatic intensity until the tension is relaxed in a modulation to C major and, eventually, a return to E flat and the gentle motion of the Gondollied. But whereas Mendelssohn would have ended the piece there, having neatly completed a tenary shape, Schubert goes on to introduce another episode, this one in A flat minor with its own middle section in B minor. If this new departure seems to be leading in the wrong direction, the easily accomplished return to E flat major and the opening material indicates that it did not stray so far off course after all.