“I gladly avail myself of a few leisure evening hours to become acquainted with Chopinʼs Etudes and other works. Their originality and the national colouring of the motives are very charming; but my fingers are constantly stumbling over hard, inartistic, and to me incomprehensible modulations, so that the whole often seems too cloying, and unworthy of a man and an accomplished musician.”
“I am a sincere admirer of Chopinʼs originality; he produces the newest and most attractive pianoforte work. But personally, I object to his artificial and often forced modulations; my fingers stick and stumble at such passages, and practise them as I may, I never play them fluently.”
Although he somewhat modified this opinion in after years, it is indicative of the impression produced on the most celebrated pianists by Chopinʼs early works. Field had a presentiment that his own glory would be dimmed by the rise of this new and brilliant orb, and he publicly spoke of Chopin as, “un talent de chambre de malade.” This criticism, which principally found credence in Germany, was for ever silenced by the pen of Eusebius and Florestan, in Robert Schumannʼs _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_.
The fame and popularity of Chopin in the Paris _salons_ increased with marvellous rapidity. He was overwhelmed with requests to play at public concerts, for it was well-known how attractive he was to cultivated audiences. On May 20th, 1832, he played at a concert in the hall of the Conservatoire, got up by the Prince of the Muscovites for the benefit of the poor. He chose the first Allegro from his F minor Concerto with orchestral accompaniments,[19] Girard directing. Heinrich Herz asked Chopin and Liszt to take part with him in a quartet for eight hands on two pianos, at a concert he wished to give with his brother Jacob, on April 3rd, 1833. Orlowski, a fellow student of Chopinʼs, wrote to his own family about that time:—
“Chopin is healthy and strong; he turns the heads of all the ladies, and the men are jealous of him. He is now the _mode_, and the fashionable world will soon be wearing gloves à la Chopin. But he pines after his country.”
Johannes Matuszynski, who came to Paris in the same year (1834) to study medicine, says the same thing in a letter to his father-in-law, in Warsaw:—
