IN THE HISTORY OF PIANO COMPOSITION, and of piano playing, Chopin was a man alone. Celebrated by his contemporaries and successors, by all the great piano-composers of the Golden Age, the enchantment of his genius was to bewitch an epoch and beyond. To Balzac he was an "angel", to George Sand he was "divine", for Liszt he was "God". A private person, a gentle artist, a musician of the profoundest vision, grand master of the concentrated and the encapsulated, there is no one with whom he can be compared.
Chopins last piano on which he composed and played in the years 1848-49. |
A brief cronological biography. "The many shades of genius" an essay on Chopin by Tadeusz Andrzej Zielinski. Selected quotes from some of Chopins many letters. |
