POLAND 1 Mar 2010 Frédéric Chopin born 200 years ago 

Polish-French composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin was born on 1 Mar 1810, and plans are under way in Poland for a year of concerts, recitals and conferences marking the bicentennial of his birth. The country's parliament has declared 2010 the Year of Fryderyk Chopin. A Chopin Centre and renovated Chopin Museum will be inaugurated to honor the great Romantic composer, whose work is regarded as a Polish cultural treasure.

The year will see around 1,300 Chopin concerts in locations ranging from northern Norway to Florida, listed on the dedicated website www.chopin2010.pl.

Poland expects an influx of visitors to the dozens of sites in the country where the composer lived and worked, particularly to the manor house in Zelazowa Wola where he was born. Now a museum, it has become a Chopin shrine. Warsaw is to have a new-look Chopin Museum. The Milan-based Migliore & Servetto company won the international competition for the design of the facility.

Chopin’s works for solo piano include about 61 mazurkas, 16 polonaises -- inspired by his strong nationalist feeling -- 26 preludes, 27 études, 21 nocturnes, 20 waltzes, 3 sonatas, 4 ballades, 4 scherzos, 4 impromptus, and many individual pieces and 17 Polish songs.

The year also sees the 16th International Chopin Competition. Held every five years, it attracts musicians from all over the world.

Organised jointly with the Warsaw Philharmonic, a series of birthday concerts will commence on 21 Feb with a recital by Rafal Blechacz. The program will culminate with the Third International Chopinological Congress. According to the organizers, "This will be the third grand gathering of scholars from all over the world devoted to the person and the oeuvre of this great Pole, following congresses in 1949 and 1999. The main purpose of the third congress is to sum up eleven years of intense Chopinological research."

Frédéric's mother and French émigré father moved from Zelazowa Wola to Warsaw, some 30 miles away, in his infancy. All the family had artistic leanings, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica biography, and even in infancy Chopin was always strangely moved when listening to his mother or eldest sister playing the piano. By six he was already trying to reproduce what he heard or to make up new tunes. The following year he started piano lessons. He soon left his teacher behind, discovering for himself an original approach to the piano. Chopin found himself invited at an early age to play at private soirées, and at eight he made his first public appearance at a charity concert. Three years later he performed in the presence of the Russian tsar Alexander I, who was in Warsaw to open Parliament. At seven he wrote a Polonaise in G Minor, which was printed, and soon afterward a march of his appealed to the Russian grand duke Constantine, who had it scored for his military band to play on parade.

In March and October 1830 he presented his new works to the Warsaw public and then left Poland with the intention of visiting Germany and Italy for further study. The disturbed state of Poland after its revolt against Russian rule persuaded him to make his way to Paris.

In 1836 he met free-living novelist Aurore Dudevant, better known as George Sand; their liaison began in the summer of 1838.

Chopin died of tuberculosis in 1849, and this body, without the heart, was buried at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris. His heart was interred at the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. UPDATED Jan/10

RELATED READING:

Chopin events
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/institute/

Chopin biography (Encyclopedia Britannica)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/114362/Frederic-Chopin