Étude Op. 10, No. 4 (Chopin)

This study, a very fast Presto con fuoco, features continuous sixteenth notes (semiquavers), in perpetuum mobile[4] fashion involving both hands.

American music critic James Huneker (1857–1921) believes that "despite its dark key color", this étude "bubbles with life and spurts flame.

"[11] Leichtentritt calls the piece a "magnificent tone-painting" [prachtvolles Tongemälde] and "elemental sound experience" [elementares Klangerlebnis]: [...] The expression of a restless fierce, almost savage, grim raging: The image of tossed up ocean waves breaking on a rocky coast, thundering and foaming, their spray splashing upwards, licking the rocks and quickly flowing down again.

[...] the fascinating interplay of rushing, roaring, murmuring, rumbling, flowing, climbing, jumping, crashing, falling, all this without a single point of rest.

"[13] Italian composer and editor Alfredo Casella (1883–1947) states: "The piece should be finished with extreme impetuosity and without any relaxing, almost like a body hurled with great velocity [suddenly dashing] against an unexpected obstacle.

"[14] In Robert Schumann's 1836 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik article on piano études,[15] the study is classified under the category "speed and lightness" [Schnelligkeit und Leichtigkeit].

"[16] Chopin's zigzag configuration of the semiquaver line hardly allows usage of the standard C♯ minor scale fingering and invites pianists to use their thumb on black keys, treating them just like white ones.

French pianist Alfred Cortot (1877–1962) states that the main difficulty to overcome is "regularity and briskness of attack" and the [very quick] alternation of narrow and wide hand positions.