Chopin. Adam Zamoyski

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СКАЧАТЬ Creatures of Prometheus, after which Chopin appeared on stage to play his Variations. He was not nervous of the Viennese audience, but was a little put out to find a highly rouged gentleman sitting down next to him, boasting that he had turned pages for Hummel and Moscheles. The skirmish with the orchestra that afternoon had ruffled him, and he launched into the piece with ‘exasperation’, half expecting them to set a trap for him. But they played perfectly, while the delighted audience applauded after each variation and called him back for a second bow at the end. After an interlude of lieder sung by a lady from Saxony, Chopin reappeared on the stage to play a ‘free fantasy’ without orchestra. He started off by improvising on a theme from Boieldieu’s La Dame Blanche, which was playing to full houses in Vienna at the time, but was subsequently asked by the director of the theatre to play ‘something Polish’, whereupon he launched into an improvisation on a peasants’ wedding song, which, in his own words, ‘electrified’ the audience. When he had finished, the orchestra itself broke into applause, and he was called back for a second bow. Count Dietrichstein, the Emperor’s director of music, came onto the stage and publicly congratulated Chopin, urging him to prolong his stay in Vienna.¹⁹

      Chopin could hardly believe his triumph. He had grown used to popularity in Warsaw, but a reception like this from an audience which was used to hearing the greatest masters was something else. His friends had dispersed themselves strategically among the audience and reported its reactions to him, the worst of which came from an old lady who enjoyed the music, but sighed: ‘What a pity the young man hasn’t got a better tournure!’²⁰ But what really went to his head was the sincere admiration of renowned older musicians like the composer Conradin Kreutzer, the virtuoso violinist Josef Mayseder and Gyrowetz, whose concerto Chopin had played at his first public concert eleven years before. It is true that when asked how he had managed to grow into such a fine musician in Warsaw, he answered that ‘With Messrs Żywny and Elsner even a halfwit would learn,’ but this was probably said more out of bravado than conviction.²¹

      The only criticism to be heard, not for the first or the last time in Chopin’s life, was that his playing lacked vigour and volume, or was, as he himself put it, ‘too delicate for those accustomed to the piano-bashing of the local artists’. This did not concern him unduly, but he felt obliged to warn his parents not to worry about it either, writing: ‘I expect that criticism to be made in the papers, particularly as the editor’s daughter enjoys nothing like a good thump at her piano.’²² While having dinner at the hotel after the concert, Chopin overheard unfavourable reactions from a man who had just come back from the Kärntnerthor, but as he remarked philosophically, ‘the man who will please everyone has not been born yet’.²³ It was not the first time he noticed that he pleased the more refined.

      Prince Lichnowsky, Beethoven’s friend and patron, could not find words enough to praise Chopin, a reaction shared by others with resounding names such as Schwarzenberg and musical reputations like that of Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt, whom Chopin found ‘warmer than any of his com positions’.²⁴ They suggested he give a second concert, and he accepted without protest, excusing himself to his parents for his presumption with the observation that people in Warsaw would not believe that the first had been a success unless it was repeated.

      Exactly a week later, on 18 August, Chopin again appeared at the Kärntnerthor. By this time Nidecki had helped him to rewrite the parts of the Krakowiak Rondo, so he was able to perform that. ‘Everyone from Kapellmeister Lachner right down to the piano tuner was astonished by the beauty of the piece,’ Chopin wrote home with pride.²⁵ Again he was called back for a second bow, and even a third, after which the audience called for an encore, a rare occurrence in those days. Rarer still, the orchestra was prepared to join in, so he was able to play the La ci darem la mano Variations as an encore. If the success of the first concert had seemed a little unreal, there was no mistaking the reaction of the audience now. Chopin had got what he had been longing for: an appraisal at the hands of an unbiased and discerning public. As he quipped after the event, he would give up music and become a house-painter if he heard any unfavourable criticism after this.²⁶

      Chopin was still, at the age of nineteen, naïve and inexperienced, and this first brush with the commercial side of musical life did not fail to disillusion him. The tetchiness of the orchestra, underscored by petty jealousy, Haslinger’s calculations regarding the printing of the Variations, and the gracious way in which Count Gallenberg lent his theatre while taking money for tickets without volunteering to pay a fee had opened his eyes, and he felt ‘cleverer and more experienced by four years’.²⁷ But such considerations counted for little when set against his reception and the reviews which began to appear as he was preparing to leave the Austrian capital.

      ‘Chopin surprised people, because they discovered in him not only a fine, but a very eminent talent,’ one of them explained, going on to say that ‘on account of the originality of his playing and compositions, one might almost attribute to him already some genius, at least as far as unconventional forms and pronounced individuality are concerned’. It went on to identify ‘a certain modesty which seems to indicate that to shine is not the aim of this young man’, and summed up accurately Chopin’s attitude when playing before an audience: ‘He emphasised but little, like one conversing in the company of clever people, not with the rhetorical aplomb which is considered by virtuosos as indispensable.’ The reviewer hailed him as a ‘true artist’, pointing out that his improvisation had delighted a public ‘in whose eyes few improvisers, with the exception of Beethoven and Hummel, have as yet found favour’.²⁸ Another called him a ‘master of the first rank’, declaring that his compositions bore ‘the stamp of great genius’ and comparing his appearance in the musical world to that of ‘the most brilliant meteors’.²⁹ The reviewer who must have pleased Chopin more than all the others wrote:

       He is a young man who goes his own way, and knows how to please in this way, although his style of playing and writing differs greatly from that of other virtuosos, and indeed chiefly in this; that the desire to make good music predominates noticeably in his case over the desire to please. ³⁰

      It was in high spirits that Chopin and his friends left Vienna for Prague, the next city on their itinerary. They spent three days there, sightseeing and calling on some of the local musicians, after which they travelled on towards Dresden, pausing at Toeplitz, whence they went on an excursion to Wallenstein’s castle at Dux. While in Toeplitz, Chopin stumbled on a Warsaw acquaintance who was a distant relative of the lord of the place, Prince Clary, and who took him along to meet the Prince that evening. Chopin’s pleasure at being in such company is evident:

      We went in; the company was small but select – some Austrian Prince, a general whose name I forget, an English sea-captain, several young dandies, apparently Austrian Princes too, and a Saxon general called Leiser, covered in medals, with a scar on his face. After tea, before which I talked a good deal with Prince Clary himself, his mother asked me whether I would ‘deign’ to sit down at the piano (good piano – Graf ’s). I did ‘deign’, but asked the company to ‘deign’ to give me a theme to improvise on. Thereupon the table at which the fair sex were knitting, embroidering and crocheting came to life with cries of ‘Un thème!’ Three Princesses consulted together and finally sought the advice of Mr Fritsche (young Clary’s tutor I think), and he, with general assent, gave me a theme from Rossini’s СКАЧАТЬ