Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) showed an affinity for the piano at an early age.  His mother provided some early instruction, but he was beyond her by the time he was six years old.  When his older sister – his senior by two years – practiced her piano lessons, Frederic liked to sit next to her on the piano bench and pick out notes on the keyboard.  His loving and indulgent parents decided to buy lessons for Frederic as well.

The children’s teacher, a gentleman named Wojciech Żywny (1756-1842), was a violin teacher.  He couldn’t find enough violin students to make ends meet, so he widened his offerings to include instruction on the piano.  Chopin studied with Żywny for six years.  He had no other piano teacher.

The headmaster of the Warsaw high school for music that Chopin attended was Józef Elsner (1769-1854), a prolific composer who was popular throughout Poland.  He taught Frederic composition, harmony, and counterpoint.

That was all the formal instruction Chopin ever received or needed to produce a string of pianistic masterpieces.  An early example of the depth of Chopin’s genius is his Opus 2, Variations on Mozart’s La ci darem la mano, completed as his high school senior project when the composer was 17.

It is rare for a composer, no matter how talented, to produce a work of this quality and complexity at such a young age.  At the time the piece was published, the seventeen-year-old Chopin was compared to the seventeen-year-old Mozart, the highest possible praise. 

Mozart was a far more productive composer at 17 than was Chopin.  Mozart’s 17^th year saw the composition of some thirteen string quartets, a string quintet, a piano concerto (no. 5, K. 175), six symphonies including the mature-sounding No. 25 in g minor (the “little” g minor, K. 183).  One of the gems he produced in January 1773 – his birthday was January 27, so it may have been completed when he was still 16 – is the motet titled Exsultate Jubilate, K. 165.  This performance of two of its four movements is well worth hearing.

This is not a complete list.  (See the Wikipedia article titled “Köchel catalogue”.)

Mozart’s 1773 output includes a set of variations, K. 180.  The theme, incidentally, was composed by Antonio Salieri, the villain of the Amadeus movie.  Chopin’s Op. 2 variations can certainly stand the comparison.

The melody that is to be put through its paces in Opus 2 is from a famous duet in Act I of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  The Don, whose game is seduction of the fair sex, spots a peasant lass that he believes could benefit from his attention.  In three minutes of music, he makes his case, allows time for her to display and then bury her resistance, and appears at the end of the duet to be headed for the happy ending he planned.  (He will be disappointed.)  This concert performance offers two superb voices and a fine orchestra.  (Trigger warning – the concert was given in Moscow.  Russian lettering appears on the screen.)

Before presenting the theme, Chopin provides a long introduction running roughly 4-1/2 minutes where he hints at the tune, mumbles and murmurs it, while inserting innovative decorative passages that seem to quote music that he will not write for ten years or more.  (Alan Walker, author of a fine biography, says that the composer that the young Chopin borrowed from most heavily was the mature Chopin.)

The theme, when it arrives, is presented straight, with only a little decoration.  Six variations follow.  Numbers 1, 2, and 4 call for ever-increasing levels of virtuosity.  Number 3 provides some calm.  Number 5 is agitated, dramatic, explosive.  The final variation converts the theme into a brilliant polonaise, followed by a virtuosic coda.

The piece was written for piano and orchestra, one of six works, all of them early, that Chopin wrote for this combination of instruments.  Each of these compositions presents the same problem for musicians – what do we do about the orchestra?  Chopin’s writing for the piano – luminous, poetic, fierce, achingly beautiful –is not matched by his handling of the orchestra, which even his greatest admirers agree is pedestrian and earthbound.

Two of these early works are piano concertos (Opus 11 and Opus 21).  Had they been titled “Sonata for Piano with Orchestral Accompaniment”, perhaps a way could have been found to work around the problem.  As it is, there is no alternative but to perform the pieces with an orchestra in tow.  If the orchestra can keep time and stay in tune, the piano can handle the rest.  (Professor Walker is kinder: “The piano and its orchestral accompaniment are well matched, the orchestra providing a perfect foil against which the piano is able to beguile us with one virtuoso effect after another.”)

Of the remaining four pieces for piano and orchestra, it is telling that the two that are most frequently performed – the Opus 2 variations and the Opus 22 “Andante spianato and grande polonaise brillante” now exist in piano solo versions that dispense with the orchestra entirely.

As a work for solo piano, Opus 2 has been a vehicle for some notable conquests in recent piano competitions.  Of note:

Yunchan Lim performed the piece in a preliminary round of the 2022 Cliburn competition on his way to a first-prize award at the age of 18.  (A YouTube commenter suggested that after hearing this performance, the other pianists in the competition might as well have packed up and gone home.)

Bruce Liu performed Opus 2 in the 2021 Chopin Competition in Warsaw.  He received the first-place award.

Tianyao Lyu received an equal share of fourth place at the 2025 Chopin Competition after including this piece in her second round recital (beginning at the 37:00 mark in the link), while Sophia Liu received a second-place prize in the 2023 Michelangeli competition in Brescia, Italy after including this piece.  Incidentally, Miss Lyu was fifteen and Miss Liu was sixteen when these performances were recorded. 

(There does not appear to be any family relationship among Bruce Liu, Tianyao Lyu, or Sophia Liu.  To add to the confusion, there is another concert pianist named Sophia Liu.  Finally, Kate Liu placed third in the 2015 edition of the Chopin Competition.  There are other individuals named Liu or Lyu with the highest level of musical talent.)

Each of these performances is worth listening to.  Yunchan Lim’s mastery is evident from the first note (although I hear a small but jarring error in the fourth variation –my apologies if this is in my head and not heard by others).  Bruce Liu produces a more rounded tone from his Fazioli than Mr. Lim does from his Steinway.  Miss Lyu has a refreshing rhythmic freedom, while Miss Liu has a way of leaving a breathing space between notes that I find refreshing.

If you would like to hear the original version with orchestra, try Claudio Arrau with the London Philharmonic (Elihu Inbal, conducting).  This is an audio-only recording.  I could not find a video recording that I thought was good enough to recommend.

The variations were a hit from the beginning.  The piece premiered in Vienna on August 11, 1829, with Chopin at the keyboard.  He wrote to his parents that the audience burst into applause as each variation ended.  They were so loud that he had trouble hearing the orchestra as they played a refrain between variations.  Critics were also generous with their praise.

I am aware of two dissenting voices.  The German critic Johann Rellstab could not seem to find a good word to say about Chopin.  The Chopin Institute (Warsaw) quotes him as saying that Opus 2 is a ”product of the vandalism wrought by the Slavic composer on Mozart’s masterpiece”.  James Huneker, writing in 1899 (“Chopin and His Music”) offers faint praise: he allows that the work “has its dazzling moments, but its musical worth is inferior”.

In October 1831, two years after the premiere, three distinguished musicians attended a performance of Opus 2 in Leipzig.  (Chopin himself was not there.)  These were Robert Schumann, at the beginning of his career as a composer and a music critic; Friedrich Wieck, Schumann’s teacher and a respected critic himself; and Wieck’s daughter Clara, a twelve-year-old piano prodigy. After Clara learned the piece, she said it was the most difficult thing she had played to that point in her career.  Clara would eventually marry Robert over her father’s objections. Rather than wait for Clara to reach the age of consent (21 at the time), the couple obtained a court order authorizing the marriage!

Wieck and Schumann each wrote glowing reviews of the work, although both seem to have misunderstood the piece. Schumann thought that each variation was meant to represent a character in Don Giovanni. Wieck thought that the variations reproduced the plot of the opera scene by scene. Professor Walker gently points out that Chopin, a classicist who lived in a romantic era, did not write program music. Chopin never acknowledged Schumann’s praise. He held Wieck’s criticism in contempt. When Wieck sought Chopin’s support to have his review translated into French, the composer managed to block the effort.

Schumann’s review may have misinterpreted the point of the piece, but he did not underestimate the quality of the composer. His review contains a line that has become famous: “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”

Gerry Bresslour

(Edited on January 16, 2025 to correct some typos)