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 Moses…31
The Clarys invited Chopin to spend another day in Toeplitz, but he wanted to press on to Dresden, where he arrived with his friends on 25 August. He visited the celebrated art gallery, went to the theatre to see Goethe’s Faust, called on some of the city’s musicians, and then left for Warsaw, feeling like a homecoming hero.
Chopin had an unpleasant surprise when he reached Warsaw on 12 September. The Warsaw Courier had somehow managed to misconstrue the reviews of his concerts and had published what amounted to an unfavourable account of his Viennese triumph. He was able to show his friends the original versions, but it was too late to scotch the general impression of failure which had attached itself to his trip.1
This only made Warsaw seem more provincial, and he could not even take solace in the sympathy of his friends. Białobłocki had died, Tytus Woyciechowski had retired to the country to look after his estate, others had gone abroad or, like Matuszyński and Fontana, were working hard at their university studies. Chopin had nothing to do, as he had finished his education and was waiting for the opportunity to begin his travels. As before, the main obstacle was lack of money. While he had been in Vienna, the rest of his family had paid a visit to Prince Antoni Radziwiłł at his summer residence of Antonin, and the consequence of this was an invitation for Chopin to spend the season in Berlin with the Prince. But he was not keen on the idea. Berlin had seemed provincial to him, and he longed for Vienna, Italy and Paris. He must have also considered the possibility of visiting England, for he was now, along with Julian Fontana, taking English lessons – from an Irishman called Macartney, who was usually drunk and trying to borrow cash from the two boys.2
Chopin struggled on with his F minor Concerto (op.21, usually referred to as no.2, although it was the first he wrote) and with the first set of Études. He went to every performance at the opera and to every concert, however uninspiring, and spent much time at Brzezina’s music shop. Like all similar establishments, this was a cross between a shop and a drawing room, with something of the atmosphere of a coffee house thrown in. People interested in music would drop in, see what had arrived from abroad, browse, play pieces through on the piano, and discuss musical topics. Chopin and other musicians used to meet on given days at the rooms of Joseph Kessler, formerly pianist to Count Potocki at Łańcut and now a music teacher in Warsaw. What they played depended on who turned up with what instruments. This way they managed to play through many chamber works that autumn, including pieces by Spohr and Hummel, and a Trio by Beethoven. ‘I have not heard anything quite so great for a long time – in this piece Beethoven makes fools of us all,’ Chopin wrote afterwards to Tytus Woyciechowski.3
Now that Chopin had time on his hands, he entered into the life of the city to a greater extent, and frequented the coffee houses and other haunts of the young intelligentsia, who were in a state of political ferment. The death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825 and the accession of his brother Nicholas I to the throne had altered the political climate in Poland. While all but the most radical had been prepared to accept the Russian hegemony under Alexander, this was becoming extremely difficult under the increasingly autocratic rule of his successor. Chopin’s generation grew restive as it watched the constitution violated, books censored and manifestations of national feeling suppressed, and by the end of 1829 there was a palpable spirit of rebellion. Coffee houses such as Brzezińska’s, which Chopin frequented for coffee in the daytime and punch in the evenings, were the scene of fervent discussions and conspiratorial activity.
But while he was with his generation in spirit, Chopin was not interested in politics, and his closest companions were not revolutionaries but poets. Some, like Stefan Witwicki and Bohdan Zaleski, were also caught up in the nationalist movement, although the one he liked best, Dominik Magnuszewski, was an erratic dilettante poet and amateur musician with a melancholy bent and a sense of alienation from his contemporaries. But from Chopin’s letters to Tytus it is clear that he never developed real intimacy with any