Chopin

Try as he might, he still could not get his F minor Concerto finished. He was in the ridiculous situation of being in demand and not being able to come up with the required works. On 6 December, his father’s name day, he arranged a concert in the Chopin apartment, with the participation of Żywny and Elsner, and on 19 December he took part in a public concert at the Merchants’ Club, at which he improvised so brilliantly that he was hailed in the papers as never before. The Polish press, which had largely ignored his existence until now, seems at last to have realised the importance of this national poet of the keyboard. ‘Mr Chopin’s works unquestionably bear the stamp of genius,’ concluded the Warsaw Courier; ‘among them is said to be a concerto in F minor, and it is hoped that he will not delay any longer in confirming our conviction that Poland too can produce great talent.’

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But the F minor Concerto was still unfinished, and it was not until 3 March 1830 that he was able to perform it. On that day he made up a small orchestra in the Chopin drawing room, and played the concerto, with Kurpiński conducting. The newspapers reviewed the concert as though it had been a public event, for there had been a select audience present. The Warsaw Courier described Chopin as the ‘Paganini of the piano’,

(#litres_trial_promo) while the Universal Daily carried a very long review, stating, amongst other things, that:

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.

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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.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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’.

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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!”’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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…’

(#litres_trial_promo) 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’.

(#litres_trial_promo) 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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 way or another, to expose him to unseemliness and possibly ridicule.

This was accompanied by an analogous development in his relations with other people. He still found it easy to make friends, and was outwardly sociable, but he grew more and more suspicious and wary of allowing them to approach too close. That is why the absent Tytus was not replaced by any other as Chopin’s confidant, and why their intimacy grew instead of waning. It also explains a great deal about Chopin’s behaviour with regard to Konstancja Gładkowska.

Warsaw was not a large city, and it would have been impossible for him not to have seen her quite often, either socially or at musical evenings. After his triumphal concerts she must have been more than ever aware of his existence. And yet it would appear that he continued to pine from afar, without attempting to let her know his feelings. Romantic adolescents are often more interested in nurturing emotions than in achieving intimacy with their object, but in Chopin’s case the fear of putting himself in an embarrassing position is probably what paralysed any move towards intimacy. It was less risky to keep pining and at the same time to channel his frustration and self-pity towards Tytus, who remained the only real presence in Chopin’s heart. ‘Nobody apart from you shall have a portrait of me,’ he wrote to Tytus after the fuss over Brzezina’s attempt to print his portrait; ‘– one other person could, but never before you, for you are dearer to me.’

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This intimacy went beyond the purely emotional. Tytus was a good pianist and wrote a little, and Chopin trusted his taste. Once he even wrote that Tytus had taught him how to ‘feel’ music.

(#litres_trial_promo) Chopin was always sending him his ‘rubbish’ or ‘laboured bits of dreariness’, as he liked to refer to his works, particularly during the spring of 1830. ‘When I write something new, I’d like to know how you would like it,’ he wrote, ‘and I feel that my new concerto in E minor will hold no value for me until you have heard it.’

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Chopin’s infatuation with Konstancja, and the attendant sense of frustration, were no doubt responsible for this uncharacteristic uncertainty, and for the sudden need to give his music meaning. For the first and last time in his life he was overtaken by the Romantic urge to programme his music both sentimentally and thematically. ‘I say to my piano what I would like to be saying to you,’ he wrote to Tytus – and what he would like to be saying to Konstancja, he might have added.

(#litres_trial_promo) The Adagio of the new concerto he was writing, which was secretly dedicated to her, is the only piece of his whose meaning Chopin ever tried to explain. ‘It is not supposed to be strong, but romantic, calm, melancholy; it should give the impression of gazing at a spot which brings back a thousand cherished mem ories,’ he wrote. ‘It should be like dreaming in beautiful springtime – by moonlight.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Other pieces written during the same period are also tinged with sentimentality, like the Nocturnes, op.9, the E flat major Étude of op.10, and some of the songs he wrote to Witwicki’s poems, like ‘The Wish’ or ‘Where Does She Lovę’ (op.74). Even Elsner noticed that some of the music from this period was inspired by ‘beautiful eyes’.

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During the remainder of March and April Chopin let himself go to pieces. He had intended to finish his second concerto within a few weeks and perform it publicly at the end of April or the beginning of May, as he needed to pursue his career and earn more money, however much it cost him in ruffled sensibilities. He was still vaguely aiming to set out for Berlin in May, and thence go wherever seemed appropriate. But May came and went, and Chopin had neither finished his new concerto nor arranged another performance. While he was heaving sighs in Warsaw, Tsar Nicholas arrived for the state opening of the Polish parliament, and, as usual on such occasions, various artists converged on the city from abroad. These included the King of Prussia’s pianist Sigismund Woerlitzer; Miss Belleville, a fine pianist and pupil of Czerny, who had recently played Chopin’s La ci darem la mano Variations at a concert in Vienna; and the singer Henriette Sontag, a beautiful woman with a magnificent voice for whom Weber had composed the title role of Euryanthe six years before. She had retired from the operatic stage after her marriage to Count Rossi and now only sang in concerts.

She gave eleven in Warsaw, most of which Chopin attended. He went into ecstasies over her voice, the elegance and control of which he related to his own touch on the piano, but felt she lacked depth of expression. ‘She seems to breathe into the stalls with the scent of the freshest flowers, and she caresses, soothes deliciously, but rarely moves to tears,’ he wrote to Tytus.

(#litres_trial_promo) Prince Radziwiłł, who had also arrived in Warsaw, introduced them. They immediately took a liking to each other, and since Henriette was besieged all day long by admiring dignitaries and aristocrats, she asked him to come and call on her in the mornings at her hotel. At this time of day he would find her in her déshabille, and he soon became infatuated with her. ‘You cannot imagine how much pleasure I have had from a closer acquaintance – in her room, on the sofa – with this “envoy of heaven” as some of the local hotheads call her,’ he wrote to his friend, all thoughts of Konstancja temporarily banished from his head.

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Chopin had intended to give a concert himself during the Tsar’s visit, but for reasons which remain unclear no such event took place. While Miss Sontag sang to the various imperial majesties and Woerlitzer and Belleville played to them, people in Warsaw wondered why Chopin did not. It may be that his contacts with some of those identified by the authorities as subversive elements had something to do with it.

With the end of June, the parliament dissolved and people began to leave the city. At the beginning of July the Haslinger edition of the La ci darem la mano Variations arrived in the Warsaw shops, and Chopin agreed to play them at a concert given on 8 July by a singer who had taken part in his earlier appearances. The audience was small, the public wearied by all the activity of the previous weeks, and although the reviews were favourable, the event failed to make any great impact.

Chopin was wondering what to do next. Romuald Hube, one of his companions on the previous year’s trip to Vienna, with whom he had been intending to travel to Paris that summer, and then on to Italy, had departed, leaving him stranded in Warsaw. Since Tytus had not come to Warsaw as he had intended, and as Chopin had nothing better to do, he went to stay with him in the country, apparently intending to spend some time there. But after he had been there only two weeks, he read in the papers that Soliva had organised a concert in which Konstancja was to make her stage debut, and he rushed back to Warsaw, much to the annoyance of Tytus.

The event may have been emotionally rewarding for Chopin, but when it was over he was once more at a loose end, harking back to his stay with Tytus. ‘Your fields have left me with a dull longing,’ he wrote; ‘that birch tree before your windows will not leave my thoughts.’ In an attempt to dispel these he went to join the rest of his family who were staying with the Skarbeks at Żelazowa Wola.

(#litres_trial_promo) He spent a couple of weeks there, adding the finishing touches to his E minor Concerto. On the warm summer nights the piano would be wheeled out onto the terrace, and Chopin would play to the house party and to the local children who would creep into the park to listen.

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In the middle of August Chopin returned to Warsaw, and although he was restless and bored, he took no action to bring forward his departure. ‘Nothing draws me abroad,’ he wrote to Tytus. ‘Believe me that when I leave next week it will only be out of deference to my calling and common sense (which must be very small, since it cannot banish everything else from my mind).’

(#litres_trial_promo) But while plans for a departure ‘next week for certain’ were announced in one letter, this was followed by another a couple of weeks later in which he informed his friend that ‘I’m still here; I don’t have enough will to decide on the day…’

(#litres_trial_promo) The delays may have had something to do with the alarming situation in Europe: in July a revolution in Paris had swept the Bourbons from the throne and replaced them with a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe, another revolution had broken out in Belgium against Dutch rule, and there were rumblings of discontent in various other parts of the Continent. But they probably had as much to do with Chopin’s own state of mind.

By the end of the summer he had reached new heights of emotional turmoil, ostensibly on account of Konstancja. Having met her well over a year before and immediately recognised her as his ‘ideal’ (the very word is redolent of schoolboy ritual), he had still not declared himself to her. ‘I could go on hiding my pathetic and ungainly passions for another couple of years,’ he wrote to Tytus, at the same time stressing their depth and force.

(#litres_trial_promo) Strong his feelings may have been, but they were certainly not exclusive. The brief infatuations with the Radziwiłł girls and Henriette Sontag are only some of the manifestations of an acute susceptibility to women. From his letters we know that at one soirée in August he saw a girl (who of course reminded him of Konstancja) whom he could not take his eyes off, and who had set his heart on fire by the end of the evening. Another day, in church, he caught the eye of ‘a certain person’, as a result of which he staggered out in a state of sensuous inebriation and nearly got himself run over by a passing carriage.