Composers / Fryderyk Chopin / Routes

 

Trasa Friends

In his extended essay on ‘Chopin’s thoughts’, Ryszard Przybylski writes: ‘friendship enabled Chopin to understand the function of opposition in man’s life, and love proved no more than a prelude to spiritual catastrophe.’ And elsewhere: ‘Romantic friendship was based on the conviction that the existence of “you” was a priori self-evident. It would never have occurred to young people living in that era that this existence should first be proven. It is our sad century that likes to dabble in such subtleties. Thanks to that conviction, the Romantics succeeded in overcoming the loneliness of the Cartesian cogito’.

Warsaw played a major role in Chopin’s life, not just as his home town, and so the place where he went to school, had his first childhood and adolescent triumphs on the stage and performed his first compositions, but as a place full of people who were close, kind and friendly to him. Chopin made his first lifelong friends in Warsaw. When he left the capital, he left behind all the sights, sounds and smells that were familiar to him, and all the people he had had around him during his earliest years and who had been so important in shaping his personality as both an artist and an individual.

There are many places in central Warsaw where the homes of Chopin’s friends and relatives once stood – and in some cases still stand. As you walk down Krakowskie Przedmieście, Nowy Świat, Marszałkowska and Chłodna streets, you pass the places where Count Fryderyk Skarbek, the composer’s godfather, Wojciech Żywny, his teacher, Maurycy Mochnacki, Stefan Witwicki, Jan Matuszyński, Kostuś Pruszak, his parents and sisters, the Kolbergs and Konstancja Gładkowska, his first great love, all lived.

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Fryderyk Chopin – Sonata in C minor, Op. 4, Allegro maestoso (1827–1828) – Ewa Pobłocka (piano Pleyel, 1848), NIFCCD015, (C)(P) The Fryderyk Chopin Institute

Fryderyk Chopin – Sonata in C minor, Op. 4, Finale. Presto (1827–1828) – Ewa Pobłocka (piano Pleyel, 1848), NIFCCD015, (C)(P) The Fryderyk Chopin Institute

Fryderyk Chopin – Sonata in C minor, Op. 4, Larghetto (1827–1828) – Ewa Pobłocka (piano Pleyel, 1848), NIFCCD015, (C)(P) The Fryderyk Chopin Institute

Fryderyk Chopin – Sonata in C minor, Op. 4, Minuetto. Allegretto (1827–1828) – Ewa Pobłocka (piano Pleyel, 1848), NIFCCD015, (C)(P) The Fryderyk Chopin Institute