There is a talk of a second concert which Chopin is to give on the 10th of March, and already more than 600 names are put down on the new list. In this there is nothing astonishing; Chopin owed us this recompense, and he well deserves this eagerness.
As this report, although it enables us to realise the atmosphere, is otherwise lacking in substance, we must try to get further information elsewhere. Happily, there is plenty at our disposal.
Before playing the violoncello sonata in public [wrote Madame Dubois to me], Chopin had tried it before some artists and intimate friends; the first movement, the masterpiece, was not understood. It appeared to the hearers obscure, involved by too many ideas, in short, it had no success. At the last moment Chopin dared not play the whole sonata before so worldly and elegant an audience, but confined himself to the Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale. I shall never forget the manner in which he executed the Barcarole, that adorable composition; the Waltz in D flat (la valse au petit chien) was encored amidst the acclamations of the public. A grande dame who was present at this concert wished to know Chopin's secret of making the scales so flowing on the piano [faire les gammes si coulees stir le piano]. The expression is good, and this limpidity has never been equalled.
Stephen Heller's remark to me, that Chopin became in his last years so weak that his playing was sometimes hardly audible, I have already related in a preceding chapter. There I have also mentioned what Mr. Charles Halle' told me—namely, that in the latter part of his life Chopin often played forte passages piano and even pianissimo, that, for instance, at the concert we are speaking of he played the two forte passages towards the end of the Barcarole pianissimo and with all sorts of dynamic finesses. Mr. Otto Goldschmidt, who was present at the concert on February 16, 1848, gave some interesting recollections of it, after the reading of a paper on the subject of Chopin, by Mr. G. A. Osborne, at one of the meetings of the Musical Association (see Proceedings, of the Musical Association for the year 1879-80):—
He [Chopin] was extremely weak, but still his playing—by reason of that remarkable quality which he possessed of gradation in touch—betrayed none of the impress of weakness which some attributed to piano playing or softness of touch; and he possessed in a greater degree than any pianoforte- player he [Mr. Goldschmidt] had ever heard, the faculty of passing upwards from piano through all gradations of tone…It was extremely difficult to obtain admission, for Chopin, who had been truly described as a most sensitive man—which seemed to be pre-eminently a quality of artistic organisations—not only had a list submitted to him of those who ought to be admitted, but he sifted that list, and made a selection from the selected list; he was, therefore, surrounded by none but friends and admirers. The room was beautifully decorated with flowers of all kinds, and he could truly say that even now, at the distance of thirty years, he had the most vivid recollection of the concert…The audience was so enraptured with his [Chopin's] playing that he was called forward again and again.
In connection with what Mr. Goldschmidt and the writer in the Gazette musicale say about the difficulty of admission and a sifted list, I have to record, and I shall do no more than record, Franchomme's denial. "I really believe," he said to me, "that this is a mere fiction. I saw Chopin every day; how, then, could I remain ignorant of it?"