Waltz, Op. 64 No. 2

Two notes sound together in the right hand and are held across the bar line, followed by a small, quick curl. Below, the left hand leaps from a bass note to two chords. Chopin marks the opening Tempo giusto.

At Più mosso the right hand runs down in chains of quavers while the left hand keeps the bass-and-two-chords pattern. This is the waltz’s recurring tune. It returns after each of the broader melodies.

The key signature changes from four sharps to five flats, giving D♭ major, which on the keyboard is the major-key twin of C♯ minor. The marking is Più lento, slower. Long notes in the melody are held above chords that contain short lines of their own in reply.

As a girl in Baku, Gurevich went from ordinary school to music school, where she had piano lessons and studied solfège, music history and choir. At seventeen she moved to Moscow to study at the Gnesin Academy. In 1998 she settled in New York, where she performs and teaches.

The running refrain returns for the last time. Its quavers fall, climb and fall again over the left hand’s three-beat accompaniment. The waltz ends with a cadence in C♯ minor.

Chopin’s opening instruction is Tempo giusto. The right hand begins in two voices, with long notes that carry over the bar line before a quick flourish follows. In each bar the left hand plays a bass note and two chords.

In his 1909 essay, Paderewski called rubato “this irreconcilable foe of the metronome”. He rejected the idea that every moment borrowed by slowing must be paid back by speeding up. For a solo pianist, he wrote, “What is lost is lost.”

Chopin built the waltz around the running Più mosso tune. It appears three times, after the opening melody, after the D♭ major section and again at the end. The score’s sequence is Tempo giusto, Più mosso, Più lento, Più mosso, Tempo primo, Più mosso.

The final Più mosso sets six running quavers in the right hand above three beats in the left. The melody falls in slurred arcs, then climbs to a high note and starts again. Its last descent ends in C♯ minor.

Chopin writes the opening melody in paired notes, with one voice sustained beneath the other. Small flourishes decorate the line while the bass keeps its waltz pattern. At the first change of pace, Più mosso, the upper voice runs down in quavers.

On his way to Paris in 1908, Rummel met Paderewski in Switzerland. Paderewski liked his compositions and invited him to stay for a year as a pupil. Rummel declined and went on to Paris, where he met Debussy.

Rummel also arranged for piano music written for other instruments and for voices. He transcribed organ works by Bach and Vivaldi and filled four books with piano versions of movements from Bach’s cantatas, in which several vocal parts are given to one pianist.

The quicker tune closes the waltz in C♯ minor. Its slurred quavers descend across the three beats of the bass, and upward runs start each phrase again. The waltz ends on a right-hand leap and a left-hand chord.