“Chopinʼs appearance corresponds exactly with his music; both are delicate and fanciful (schwärmerisch.) He played to me at my request, and then for the first time I really understood his music and saw the explanation of the ladiesʼ enthusiasm. The _ad libitum_ which with his interpreters degenerates into bad time, is, when he himself performs, the most charming originality of execution; the harsh and dilettante-like modulations, which I could never get over when playing his compositions, ceased to offend when his delicate fairy-like fingers glided over them; his _piano_ is so delicate that no very strong _forte_ is required to give the desired contrast. Thus we do not miss the orchestral effects which the German school demands from a pianist, but feel ourselves carried away as by a singer who, paying little heed to the accompaniment, abandons himself to his feelings. He is quite unique in the pianistic world. He declared he liked my music very much; at any rate he is well acquainted with it. He played his Studies, and his last new work, the ‘Preludes,’ and I played several of my works to him. Who would have thought that, with all his sentimentality, Chopin had also a comic vein? He was lively, merry, and extremely comic in his mimicry of Pixis, Liszt, and a hunch-backed pianoforte amateur.”
Chopinʼs imitative talent displayed itself, as the reader knows, in early youth, and increased so much in after years that the French players, Boccage and Madame Dorval, declared that they had never seen anything of the kind so excellent before. My friend, Joseph Nowakowski, a fellow-student of Chopin, relates the following anecdotes:—
“When I visited Chopin in Paris, I asked him to introduce me to Kalkbrenner, Liszt, and Pixis, ‘That is unnecessary,’ answered Chopin, ‘wait a moment, and I will present them to you, but each separately.’ Then he sat down to the piano after the fashion of Liszt, played in his style and imitated all his movements to the life; after which he impersonated Pixis. The next evening I went to the theatre with Chopin. He left his box for a short time, and turning round I saw Pixis beside me. I thought it was Chopin, and I laughingly clapped him on the shoulder, exclaiming, leave off your mimicry. My neighbour was quite flabbergasted by such familiarity on the part of a total stranger, but fortunately at that moment Chopin returned to the box, and we had a hearty laugh over the comical mistake. Then, with his own peculiar grace of manner, he apologized both for himself and me to the real Pixis.