Chopin. Adam Zamoyski

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       The creative spirit of the young composer has taken the path of genius…I felt that in the originality of his thought I could glimpse the profundity of Beethoven, and in the execution the art and pleasing qualities of Hummel…All the listeners were moved by these works, and those more closely associated with the artist were deeply affected. His old piano teacher was nearly in tears. Elsner could not conceal his joy as he moved about, hearing only praise of his pupil and his compositions. Kurpiński conducted the orchestra himself for the young artist. This is a real talent, a true talent. Mr Chopin must not hide it and must let himself be heard publicly; but he must also be prepared to hear voices of envy, which usually spare only mediocrity. ⁹

      Egged on from all sides, Chopin agreed to perform, and on 12 March the Warsaw Courier informed the public that he would be giving a concert in the National Theatre. Two days later the same paper announced that all the tickets had been sold, although there were still three days to go before the event.

      On the morning of 17 March Chopin rehearsed the concerto with full orchestra, under Kurpiński, and on the same evening played it through before his largest audience to date: eight hundred people. He also played his Fantasia on Polish Airs, sandwiched between overtures by Elsner and Kurpiński and some songs by Paër. In his meticulous diary, Kurpiński noted that, although the theatre had been packed with an enthusiastic audience, the piano used had been too soft-toned, and much of the effect had been lost.¹⁰ Chopin himself was not at all pleased with the performance. He realised that some people could not hear properly, and felt that the music had not got through to the audience, whose enthusiastic applause, he felt, was simply ‘to show that they hadn’t been bored’.¹¹

      He could not have been more wrong, for although playing on his own quiet piano had clearly been a mistake, the reception was rapturous. The Warsaw newspapers were dominated by reviews of the performance, which in some cases took up a third of the whole issue. The critics could not make their minds up whether it was his playing or his compositions which were the more remarkable, and comparisons with Mozart and Hummel were bandied liberally. Hardly had the sound of his playing died away than a persistent chant for a second appearance began. This was arranged for 22 March, and a Russian general obligingly lent Chopin a strong Viennese instrument for the occasion. The concert opened with a symphony by Józef Nowakowski, an older Conservatoire colleague, after which Chopin played his concerto, the Krakowiak Rondo and an improvisation on a peasant song, again interspersed with other pieces. This time the music got through to everyone, and there was wild enthusiasm in the theatre. People shouted for a third concert, while a French pianist on his way to Moscow, who had dropped in out of boredom, rushed out to buy a bottle of champagne and insisted on toasting the unknown young Pole.

      Chopin’s playing had by all accounts been at its best. As one review put it: ‘It was as though his manner of playing was saying: “It is not me – it is music!”’¹² Another explained that ‘Chopin does not play like others; with him we have the impression that every note passes through the eyes to the soul, and that the soul pours it into the fingers…’¹³ Yet another, by a music-lover called Albert Grzymała, compared his playing to ‘a beautiful declamation, which seems to be the natural medium of his compositions’.¹⁴ Perhaps the most interesting reflection, summing up as it did the whole of Chopin’s career as a performing artist as well as his attitude to life as a musician, was made by a society lady, whose diary entry for the evening of the concert was printed in the Polish Courier, and after heaping praise on him, noted:

      Chopin’s playing is like, if I may express myself in such manner, the social ton of an important and substantial person who lacks any pretentiousness, because he knows he has a natural right to everything; it is like a young innocent beauty, whose mind has not been tainted by the idea that she could increase her charms through dress. You could be accused of the same innocence, you interesting artist! The stage requires brilliance, excellence, and even something of the terrible, for while the really beautiful and gentle tones are understood by the few, they make only a weak effect on others, and none at all on the many. But even this reproach is a compliment to you…¹⁵

      The reproach was certainly justified, for now that he had been reviewed and praised more than Paganini and Hummel during their visits, now that the whole of Warsaw had finally understood his playing and his compositions, Chopin did not give the third concert everyone was clamouring for, even though the money involved would have meant freedom to travel wherever he liked. He explained his reluctance to Tytus by saying that he had nearly finished his second piano concerto (the one in E minor, usually called no. 1), and that, wishing to have something new for his next appearance, he would wait until this was ready, which he hoped would be after Easter.

      The real reasons for his refusal lay elsewhere. He found the preparations for the concerts exhausting and stressful, as he had to select musicians and decide whose music would be chosen for the programme, which in a small place like Warsaw was a delicate operation. Friends and acquaintances took offence when he failed to reserve boxes for them or personally invite them to the event. ‘You wouldn’t believe what torture the three days before the concert are,’ he wrote to Tytus after the first one; but he was soon to discover that the period afterwards could be equally bruising.¹⁶

      He was horrified by what he considered to be the exaggerated praise and sycophancy that accompanied his appearances: he received verse offerings from hacks; his old friend Alexandrine de Moriolles sent him a crown of laurels; Antoni Orłowski, a colleague from the Conservatoire, was busy writing Waltzes and Mazurkas to themes from Chopin’s concerto; and the music publisher Brzezina wanted to print a lithograph portrait of him. At the same time the newspapers carried a number of articles discussing the nature of Chopin’s genius and its position in the world of music. One long and somewhat illogical article ended up by thanking Heaven and Elsner that the young composer had not been allowed to fall into the hands of ‘some Rossinist’, an ill-concealed jibe at Kurpiński.¹⁷

      This provoked an open war between those who were for Elsner and German music, and those who supported Kurpiński and Italian music. Chopin was appalled to find himself at the centre of the fracas, and did everything he could to extricate himself. He begged Antoni Orłowski not to print his com positions, and refused to allow Brzezina to publish a portrait. ‘I don’t want to read or listen to what anyone writes or says any more,’ he wrote petulantly to Tytus, for whose presence he longed more than ever.¹⁸

      The quarrel had nothing whatever to do with Chopin himself, and he need not have felt in any way implicated in its un pleasantness. Yet the hitherto highly sociable and uninhibited composer was beginning to develop alarmingly sensitive spots. He had always been self-conscious enough to see the ridiculous in his own behaviour, and had in the past drawn great pleasure from describing it in letters to friends. It may be that this emanated from a deeper fear of being ridiculed by others; both his extreme modesty about his work and the arch tone in which he often referred to himself would suggest an underlying pride hiding behind bashfulness. As he reached the end of his teens and began to take himself a little more seriously – seriously enough to nurture a great passion – he shrank from anything that might expose him to criticism or judgement. His first major appearances as a professional musician had made him a public figure, which embarrassed him, and had provoked a squabble which disgusted and alarmed him. The episode only strengthened his conviction that any sort of public activity was bound, in one СКАЧАТЬ