Chopin's Piano

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 153, 29 May 1942, Page 3

Chopin's Piano

WAS standing gazing somewhat in awe at some lovely examples of modern Concert Grands -all sleek and

shiny and superb; and then suddenly someone said "I think this will interest you": and almost immediately I was sitting at the keyboard of a smaller, not-so-new instrument that had an inscription under the lid. At what I read I was strangely moved; this was the piano that Chopin had played on during his visits to London. As I gazed down at the keys which his fingers had once so magically moved, all that I had ever read of his life became suddenly real to me, For a few moments I was left alone, just sitting fhere; and I saw Chopin leaving Poland as a very young man with the strange presentiment that he would never return. . ..I saw the Polish Conservatoire students farewelling him on the Polish frontier with a silver cup filléd with Polish earth, which he always kept with him wherever he went. I saw him in the great salons of Paris; and struggling with ill-health at Majorca, and now more vividly than ever before I could see him in London -~on the first visit when he went to see a specialist about his health. He called himself Mr. Fritz in the hope that his identity would remain anonymous. —

("Little Adventures in Music: Playing

on Chopin’s Piano."

Valerie

Corliss

2YA, May 5.)