The Polish composer Frédéric François Chopin (1810 – 1849) was a leading musician of the Romantic era in the 19th century. During his brief lifetime, he wrote primarily for solo piano, many of which pieces upheld his reputation as a poetic genius without equal in his generation.

Chopin wrote the lovely Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 in 1830 when he was just 20 years old. It was first performed in October of that year in Warsaw, with Chopin himself being the soloist during one of his “farewell” concerts before leaving Poland. The concerto was actually the second of Chopin’s two piano concertos to be published; the first was his Piano Concerto No. 2, completed in 1829.

Despite his youth, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor already marked Chopin as a composer who has reached full emotional and musical maturity. Although the concerto is best known for its lyrical middle (second) movement, it also contains melodic gems throughout the two outer movements, with Chopin wrapping the rich sounds of the piano with some gloriously sublime string accompaniment. A superb rendition of the full concerto by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with Zubin Mehta as the conductor is available on Youtube (not directly linkable to this website).

But here is the achingly beautiful second movement (Romanze Larghetto) performed by the Slovak Symphony Orchestra. Chopin wrote that this movement was meant to create a “calm and melancholic mood, giving the impression of someone looking gently towards a spot that calls to mind a thousand happy memories.”.