Impromptu No 2 in F minor, Op 31 (1883)

Much of Faur's piano music is difficult to play, but is rarely virtuosic in

style. The composer disliked showy display, and the predominant
characteristic of his piano music is a classical restraint and
understatement.
His works for the piano are marked by a classical French lucidity; [6] he
was unimpressed by pianistic display, commenting of keyboard virtuosi,
"the greater they are, the worse they play me."
His early piano works are influenced in style by Chopin,[15] and throughout
his life he composed piano works using similar titles to those of Chopin,
notably nocturnes and barcarolles.[16] An even greater influence was
Schumann, whose piano music Faur loved more than any other. [17] The
authors of The Record Guide (1955) wrote that Faur learnt restraint and
beauty of surface from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodic lines
from Chopin, "and from Schumann, the sudden felicities in which his
development sections abound, and those codas in which whole
movements are briefly but magically illuminated."[18] When Faur was a
student at the cole Niedermeyer his tutor had introduced him to new
concepts of harmony, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant".
[n 3]
By using unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Faur
anticipated the techniques of Impressionist composers.[6]
Composed in May 1883, between the First Valse-Caprice and the blithely
ardent Third Nocturne, Faur's Second Impromptu is a brilliantly
nonchalant tarantella which gives way, over a still voluble
accompaniment, to one of those breathtaking lyrical felicities with which
his early and middle period works are studded. A virtuosic return of the
opening whirl brings again the lyrical flight of confiding rapture, set off
now by the tarantella's melodic outline, to finish with a dazzling flourish.
Scintillant, charming, and superficial, Alfred Cortot noted that "It is,
actually, the scheme of the first Impromptu -- but a little more
individualized and nearer to the perfect model of the third." The Second
and Third Impromptus were given their premires by Saint-Sans at a
Socit Nationale concert of January 10, 1885.
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Dedicated to Mlle Sacha de Rebina,[55] the second impromptu maintains

an airy tarantella rhythm.[64] It is scored less richly than the first of the set,
giving it a lightness of texture.[