Frédéric Chopin (Part 2)

Chopin arrived in Paris in late September 1831, still uncertain whether he would settle there for good. In fact he would never return to Poland, becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration. In February 1832 Chopin gave a concert that garnered universal admiration. The influential musicologist and critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote in Revue musicale: "Here is a young man who, taking nothing as a model, has found, if not a complete renewal of piano music, then in any case part of what has long been sought in vain, namely, an extravagance of original ideas that are unexampled anywhere..." Only three months earlier, in December 1831, Robert Schumann, reviewing Chopin's Variations on "La ci darem la mano", Op. 2 (variations on a theme from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni), had written: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius." 

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Photos & Paintings:

• Autograph partiture by the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin of his Polonaise Op. 53 in A flat major for piano, 1842. Heineman Music Collection (Unbound), Pierpont Morgan Library Dept. of Music Manuscripts and Books.
• Chopin's Polonaise - a Ball in Hôtel Lambert in Paris., 1849-1860. Artist: Teofil Kwiatkowski.
• Local piano on which the Polish composer Frederic Chopin played, while waiting for the French Pleyel piano.
• Signature of Frederic Chopin  stylised as a half note.
• Frederic Chopin's grave, 1850, Cemetery Père-Lachaise - Division 11 by Marcin L., 26 December 2005