The details of the account of Chopin's visit to Leipzig which I am now going to give, were communicated to me by Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel, the well-known professor of pianoforte-playing at the Leipzig Conservatorium, who died in 1880.
In the middle of the year 1835 the words "Chopin is coming" were passing from mouth to mouth, and caused much stir in the musical circles of Leipzig. Shortly after this my informant saw Mendelssohn in the street walking arm in arm with a young man, and he knew at once that the Polish musician had arrived, for this young man could be no other than Chopin. From the direction in which the two friends were going, he guessed whither their steps were tending. He, therefore, ran as fast as his legs would carry him to his master Wieck, to tell him that Chopin would be with him in another moment. The visit had been expected, and a little party was assembled, every one of which was anxious to see and hear the distinguished artist. Besides Wieck, his wife, daughter, and sister-in-law, there were present Robert Schumann and Wieck's pupils Wenzel, Louis Rakemann, and Ulex. But the irascible pedagogue, who felt offended because Chopin had not come first to him, who had made such efforts for the propagation of his music, would not stay and welcome his visitor, but withdrew sulkily into the inner apartments. Wieck had scarcely left the room when Mendelssohn and Chopin entered. The former, who had some engagement, said, "Here is Chopin!" and then left, rightly thinking this laconic introduction sufficient. Thus the three most distinguished composers of their time were at least for a moment brought together in the narrow space of a room. [Footnote: This dictum, like all superlatives and sweeping assertions, will no doubt raise objectors; but, I think, it may be maintained, and easily maintained with the saving clause "apart from the stage.">[ Chopin was in figure not unlike Mendelssohn, but the former was more lightly built and more graceful in his movements. He spoke German fluently, although with a foreign accent. The primary object of Chopin's visit was to make the acquaintance of Clara Wieck, who had already acquired a high reputation as a pianist. She played to him among other things the then new and not yet published Sonata in F sharp minor (Op. 11) by Schumann, which she had lately been studying. The gentlemen dared not ask Chopin to play because of the piano, the touch of which was heavy and which consequently would not suit him. But the ladies were bolder, and did not cease entreating him till he sat down and played his Nocturne in E flat (Op. 9, No. 2). After the lapse of forty-two years Wenzel was still in raptures about the wonderful, fairy-like lightness and delicacy of Chopin's touch and style. The conversation seems to have turned on Schubert, one of Schumann's great favourites, for Chopin, in illustration of something he said, played the commencement of Schubert's Alexander March. Meanwhile Wieck was sorely tried by his curiosity when Chopin was playing, and could not resist the temptation of listening in the adjoining room, and even peeping through the door that stood slightly ajar. When the visit came to a close; Schumann conducted Chopin to the house of his friend Henrietta Voigt, a pupil of Louis Berger's, and Wenzel, who accompanied them to the door, heard Schumann say to Chopin: "Let us go in here where we shall find a thorough, intelligent pianist and a good piano." They then entered the house, and Chopin played and also stayed for dinner. No sooner had he left, than the lady, who up to that time had been exceedingly orthodox in her musical opinions and tastes, sent to Kistner's music-shop, and got all the compositions by Chopin which were in stock.
The letter of Mendelssohn which I shall quote presently and an entry in Henrietta Voigt's diary of the year 1836, which will be quoted in the next chapter, throw some doubt on the latter part of Herr Wenzel's reminiscences. Indeed, on being further questioned on the subject, he modified his original information to this, that he showed Chopin, unaccompanied by Schumann, the way to the lady's house, and left him at the door. As to the general credibility of the above account, I may say that I have added nothing to my informant's communications, and that in my intercourse with him I found him to be a man of acute observation and tenacious memory. What, however, I do not know, is the extent to which the mythopoeic faculty was developed in him.
[Footnote: Richard Pohl gave incidentally a characterisation of this exceedingly interesting personality in the Signale of September, 1886, No. 48. Having been personally acquainted with Wenzel and many of his friends and pupils, I can vouch for its truthfulness. He was "one of the best and most amiable men I have known," writes R. Pohl, "full of enthusiasm for all that is beautiful, obliging, unselfish, thoroughly kind, and at the same time so clever, so cultured, and so many-sided as—excuse me, gentlemen—I have rarely found a pianoforte-teacher. He gave pianoforte lessons at the Conservatorium and in many private houses; he worked day after day, year after year, from morning till night, and with no other outcome as far as he himself was concerned than that all his pupils—especially his female pupils—loved him enthusiastically. He was a pupil of Friedrich Wieck and a friend of Schumann.">[
In a letter dated October 6, 1835, and addressed to his family, Mendelssohn describes another part of Chopin's sojourn in Leipzig and gives us his opinion of the Polish artist's compositions and playing:—
The day after I accompanied the Hensels to Delitzsch, Chopin
was here; he intended to remain only one day, so we spent
this entirely together and had a great deal of music. I
cannot deny, dear Fanny, that I have lately found that you do
not do him justice in your judgment [of his talents]; perhaps
he was not in a right humour for playing when you heard him,
which may not unfrequently be the case with him. But his
playing has enchanted me anew, and I am persuaded that if you
and my father had heard some of his better pieces played as
he played them to me, you would say the same. There is
something thoroughly original and at the same time so very
masterly in his piano-forte-playing that he may be called a
really perfect virtuoso; and as every kind of perfection is
welcome and gratifying to me, that day was a most pleasant
one, although so entirely different from the previous ones
spent with you Hensels.
I was glad to be once more with a thorough musician, not with
those half-virtuosos and half-classics who would gladly
combine in music les honneurs de la vertu et les plaisirs du
vice, but with one who has his perfect and well-defined genre
[Richtung]. To whatever extent it may differ from mine, I can
get on with it famously; but not with those half-men. The
Sunday evening was really curious when Chopin made me play
over my oratorio to him, while curious Leipzigers stole into
the room to see him, and how between the first and second
parts he dashed off his new Etudes and a new Concerto, to the
astonishment of the Leipzigers, and I afterwards resumed my
St. Paul, just as if a Cherokee and a Kaffir had met and
conversed. He has such a pretty new notturno, several parts
of which I have retained in my memory for the purpose of
playing it for Paul's amusement. Thus we passed the time
pleasantly together, and he promised seriously to return in
the course of the winter if I would compose a new symphony
and perform it in honour of him. We vowed these things in the
presence of three witnesses, and we shall see whether we both
keep our word. My works of Handel [Footnote: A present from
the Committee of the Cologne Musical Festival of 1835.]
arrived before Chopin's departure, and were a source of quite
childish delight to him; but they are really so beautiful
that I cannot sufficiently rejoice in their possession.
Although Mendelssohn never played any of Chopin's compositions in public, he made his piano pupils practise some of them. Karasowski is wrong in saying that Mendelssohn had no such pupils; he had not many, it is true, but he had a few. A remark which Mendelssohn once made in his peculiar naive manner is very characteristic of him and his opinion of Chopin. What he said was this: "Sometimes one really does not know whether Chopin's music is right or wrong." On the whole, however, if one of the two had to complain of the other's judgment, it was not Chopin but Mendelssohn, as we shall see farther on.
To learn what impression Chopin made on Schumann, we must once more turn to the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, where we find the Polish artist's visit to Leipzig twice mentioned:—
October 6, 1835. Chopin was here, but only for a few hours,
which he passed in private circles. He played just as he
composes, that is, uniquely.
The second mention is in the P.S. of a transcendental Schwarmerbrief addressed by Eusebius (the personification of the gentle, dreamy side of Schumann's character) to Chiara (Clara Wieck):—