Out of the quiet of the last bars of the C minor Prelude blooms the cantilena of the B flat major Prelude (No. 21), supremely lovely in its Classical simplicity. It seems to be an echo of the piece that went before. Marceli Antoni Szulc describes it as follows: ‘everything here is melody and song, even the accompanying figures of the left hand’. That is just how the beginning of this work sounds. Its middle is filled with music that is brimful of dramatic resonance, leading to a climax that confounds expectations of a soothing culmination. Only after the climax has passed does the music die down and fade, though that fading proves delusive. Hanging in the air is the catastrophe of the finale, presaged by each subsequent part of the cycle.Author: Mieczysław TomaszewskiA series of programmes entitled ‘Fryderyk Chopin's Complete Works’Polish Radio 2