Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/172

140 place of the Minuet movement, is much more extended than usual. In place of the Trio, we have a movement in the tonic minor of low broken chords, full of that brooding sadness to which Schumann and Brahms in later days became so prone. This is linked up, however, to the return of the first joyous theme to which it forms an effective foil. The final Rondo in E flat is real Mozart, and Mozart at his best. Play the first subject through, sixteen bars in length. Still the bridge passage which follows is real Beethoven He seems fairly obsessed with his little figure, unable to let it alone, repeating it no less than thirteen times in succession. There is a virile second subject. The middle episode is stormy and difficult to play unless one divines intuitively the right action. There is a remarkable enharmonic change on the last page but one, where the tonality is moved up a semitone from B flat to B natural (a device of which the composer is fond), returning seven bars later on by the chameleon-like "diminished seventh" chord. Reference is made in the Coda to the rhythm of the stormy middle episode which is here turned to good use in the brilliant peroration.