Chopin debuts in Paris

On today's date in 1832, the Polish pianist and composer, Frederic Chopin, made his concert debut in Paris, at the Salle Pleyel. Among the enthusiastic audience was another composer-pianist by the name of Franz Liszt, who would rapidly become Chopin's close friend and advocate.

Chopin dedicated his recently completed Piano Etudes, Op. 10, to Liszt, and once wrote to a friend these lines, "I am writing without knowing what my pen is scribbling, because at this moment Liszt is playing my etudes and putting honest thoughts out of my head. I should like to rob him of the way he plays them!"

The failure of the Polish Insurrection of 1831 had driven a large number of Polish refugees to Paris, where they joined émigré groups of Italians and Austrians who had also fled political repression at home for the more liberal, welcoming atmosphere of the French capital.

Chopin was in the midst of a concert tour in Austria and Germany when he heard of troubles back home, and, more by accident than design, found himself cut off from his native land.