Chopin. Adam Zamoyski
next few months.
He was now faced by an important hurdle, in the shape of his final exams at the Conservatoire; Nicolas Chopin would certainly take note of the results and plan his son’s future accordingly. It is not known what form the exams took, but they were partly based on his work over the past three years. As he considered this, Elsner noted in his diary that Chopin had ‘opened a new era in piano music through his astonishing playing as well as through his compositions’.14 In the official verdict on the exams in the Conservatoire register, he was more categorical: ‘Chopin, Fryderyk; third year student. Outstanding abilities; musical genius.’15
This would have been the logical moment for Chopin to set off on a foreign tour, but there seemed to be no way of financing it. The best he could do for the time being was to join a party of friends from the University who were going on a jaunt to Vienna. They left Warsaw immediately after the exams, on 21 July. On the way they visited the historic city of Kraków, and from there went on a couple of excursions, one down the Wieliczka salt mines, another through the scenic valley of Ojców. The cart they were travelling in got lost and then stuck in a stream, leaving them to wander for hours in the pouring rain before they found shelter and some straw for the night. That Chopin did not catch cold suggests that his health had improved considerably.
The little party reached Vienna on the last day of July 1829, and Chopin took an immediate liking to the city. He saw several operas, by Boieldieu, Meyerbeer and Méhul, went to a number of concerts, and found perfection everywhere. He had mastered the reticence which had held him back in Berlin, and immediately took steps to get acquainted with the musical establishment. He called on Haslinger, the publisher to whom he had sent the scores of the La ci darem la mano Variations and the C minor Sonata; on his old friend and teacher Wilhelm Würfel, who had moved back to Vienna; and on a venerable Polish music-lover, Count Husarzewski. They in turn introduced him to others, including the venerable Ignaz Schuppanzigh, violinist and leader of the quartet which had performed all Beethoven’s chamber music for him; the two foremost piano-makers, Stein and Graf; and, most important, the director of the Kärntnerthor Theatre, Count Gallenberg.
‘I don’t know what it is, but all these Germans are amazed by me, and I am amazed at them being so amazed by me,’ Chopin wrote to his parents a few days after his arrival.16 Haslinger, who had probably put aside the score of the Variations by an unknown Pole without looking at it, changed his attitude radically when the young man sat down at the piano in his shop and played them through. He promised to publish them if Chopin agreed to play them in public, and the project was taken up with enthusiasm by others. Würfel believed that the Viennese public was ‘hungry for new music’, Husarzewski predicted a resounding success, and Count Gallenberg offered his theatre free if Chopin wished to give a concert. Chopin himself was irresolute, and feared that Elsner and his family might not approve, but let himself be persuaded.17
The Kärntnerthor Theatre was booked for 11 August and, at Chopin’s request, a Graf piano provided. An orchestra was assembled, and a search made for others who might fill out the programme – all concerts at the time took the form of a succession of different artists performing in a variety of musical forms. There were problems at the rehearsal that afternoon, as the two pieces Chopin intended to play with the orchestra (the La ci darem la mano Variations and the Krakowiak Rondo) were written out in his usual careless way, and the disgruntled orchestra began to mutiny. They refused to play the Krakowiak, and it was only thanks to the diplomatic efforts of Tomasz Nidecki, whose travels had brought him to Vienna, that the concert took place at all. Nidecki made a clean copy of the scores of the Variations, which the orchestra eventually agreed to play. ‘At seven o’clock in the evening I made my appearance on the Imperial and Royal stage!’ Chopin wrote to his parents the following day.18
The concert opened with the orchestra playing the overture from Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus, after which Chopin appeared on stage to play his Variations. He was not nervous of the Viennese audience, but was a little put out to find a highly rouged gentleman sitting down next to him, boasting that he had turned pages for Hummel and Moscheles. The skirmish with the orchestra that afternoon had ruffled him, and he launched into the piece with ‘exasperation’, half expecting them to set a trap for him. But they played perfectly, while the delighted audience applauded after each variation and called him back for a second bow at the end. After an interlude of lieder sung by a lady from Saxony, Chopin reappeared on the stage to play a ‘free fantasy’ without orchestra. He started off by improvising on a theme from Boieldieu’s La Dame Blanche, which was playing to full houses in Vienna at the time, but was subsequently asked by the director of the theatre to play ‘something Polish’, whereupon he launched into an improvisation on a peasants’ wedding song, which, in his own words, ‘electrified’ the audience. When he had finished, the orchestra itself broke into applause, and he was called back for a second bow. Count Dietrichstein, the Emperor’s director of music, came onto the stage and publicly congratulated Chopin, urging him to prolong his stay in Vienna.19
Chopin could hardly believe his triumph. He had grown used to popularity in Warsaw, but a reception like this from an audience which was used to hearing the greatest masters was something else. His friends had dispersed themselves strategically among the audience and reported its reactions to him, the worst of which came from an old lady who enjoyed the music, but sighed: ‘What a pity the young man hasn’t got a better tournure!’20 But what really went to his head was the sincere admiration of renowned older musicians like the composer Conradin Kreutzer, the virtuoso violinist Josef Mayseder and Gyrowetz, whose concerto Chopin had played at his first public concert eleven years before. It is true that when asked how he had managed to grow into such a fine musician in Warsaw, he answered that ‘With Messrs Żywny and Elsner even a halfwit would learn,’ but this was probably said more out of bravado than conviction.21
The only criticism to be heard, not for the first or the last time in Chopin’s life, was that his playing lacked vigour and volume, or was, as he himself put it, ‘too delicate for those accustomed to the piano-bashing of the local artists’. This did not concern him unduly, but he felt obliged to warn his parents not to worry about it either, writing: ‘I expect that criticism to be made in the papers, particularly as the editor’s daughter enjoys nothing like a good thump at her piano.’22 While having dinner at the hotel after the concert, Chopin overheard unfavourable reactions from a man who had just come back from the Kärntnerthor, but as he remarked philosophically, ‘the man who will please everyone has not been born yet’.23 It was not the first time he noticed that he pleased the more refined.
Prince Lichnowsky, Beethoven’s friend and patron, could not find words enough to praise Chopin, a reaction shared by others with resounding names such as Schwarzenberg and musical reputations like that of Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt, whom Chopin found ‘warmer than any of his com positions’.24 They suggested he give a second concert, and he accepted without protest, excusing himself to his parents for his presumption with the observation that people in Warsaw would not believe that the first had been a success unless it was repeated.
Exactly a week later, on 18 August, Chopin again appeared at the Kärntnerthor. By this time Nidecki had helped him to rewrite the parts of the Krakowiak Rondo, so he was able to perform that. ‘Everyone from Kapellmeister Lachner right down to the piano tuner was astonished by the beauty of the piece,’ Chopin wrote home with pride.25 Again he was called back for a second bow, and even a third, after which the audience called for an encore, a rare occurrence in those days. Rarer still, the