As you’ll remember from the end of the first instalment of this two-part column on Chopin as teacher (in the Winter 2024 issue), in March 1839 the aspiring Viennese pianist Friederike Müller (1816-95), accompanied by her solicitous aunt Wilhelmine, was thrilled to arrive in Paris. Friederike was fixed on finding a famous teacher for further study: Sigismond Thalberg, Liszt and Chopin were top of her list. At first, she didn’t seem much to mind on whom the choice would fall. This might seem ridiculous – after all, who among us would seriously choose Thalberg if Chopin or Liszt were available? But in the late 1830s Thalberg’s star was shining with dazzling brightness. He was, by some distance, more popular in Paris than the mercurial, eccentric Liszt, whose morals, if not musicianship, were widely condemned (adultery and the annual issuing of illegitimate children have rarely been considered bourgeois virtues). Thalberg was a more powerful, if far less poetic, performer than the fastidious Chopin, and estimated by some critics (deluded though they may have been) to be the most original pianist-composer of the decade. Disappointingly for Friederike, none of her three favoured artists were actually in Paris when she got there. She ended up with Chopin only because he returned to the city earlier than the other two, and agreed, to her great excitement, to take her on as a pupil.

We are fortunate that Friederike had two other aunts, Sophie and Charlotte, who stayed behind in Vienna and financed her studies. In gratitude, she wrote lengthy letters to them almost every day – in gushing, oft-misspelled, questionably punctuated but unquestionably informative prose – about her sessions with Chopin, and about Parisian musical life in general. It is these letters that have been assembled and expertly annotated by musicologist Uta Goebl-Streicher in Frédéric Chopin, Einblicke in Unterricht und Umfeld: Die Briefe seiner Lieblingsschülerin Friederike Müller, Paris 1839-1845 (‘Frédéric Chopin: Insights into his Teaching and [Social] Environment: The Letters of his favourite student Friederike Müller, Paris 1839-1845’). In case you’re wondering, the ‘Streicher’ in the editor’s name is indeed that of the famous family of Viennese piano makers. Friederike herself became part of the lineage when she married Johann Baptist Streicher (son of Beethoven’s friend Nanette Streicher) in 1849.

For anyone who loves Chopin’s music, whether as a player or listener, the book is fascinating – detailed accounts of lessons with the great composer, written ‘hot off the press’, not dimly recalled decades later in the mists of old age, as many other reminiscences were. It contains so many direct quotes that we might almost feel, on reading it, that we’ve been taught by Chopin ourselves. Friederike quickly came not just to admire Chopin the musician, but obviously developed a blatant crush on Chopin the man, although there’s no sign whatsoever that the latter was reciprocated. What do we learn from her letters? Many things that turn to full Technicolor the monochrome sketch of Chopin’s teaching that I offered in my earlier article.

In the first place, Chopin regarded himself as being in the business of training professional pianists, no matter that many of his posh pupils were nowhere near that level. When he came across an assiduous student like Friederike, exceptionally eager to learn and with an already solid technical foundation, he put her – in a friendly fashion – through the mill. As expected, she was asked to ‘practise Bach a lot’, but she was unexpectedly also required to master a much more extensive range of repertoire, including the virtuoso showstoppers of the day that Chopin is routinely thought to have despised. Naturally, she learned much of Chopin’s own music: he even dedicated to her the Op 46 Allegro de concert – pianistically one of his toughest pieces – which shows how highly he regarded her talents. Almost as frequently, however, she was assigned warhorses by Liszt (the Niobe Fantasy, an early version of ‘Mazeppa’ and more), Thalberg (the Moses Fantasy), Alkan (‘Aime-moi’ – ‘Love me’ – from Op 15, although Chopin thought it a stupid title), and substantial selections from Kalkbrenner, Hummel and Field. Chopin was clearly convinced that mastering this music was indispensable for a ‘modern’ pianist.

Furthermore, despite Chopin’s fondness for Pleyel pianos, Friederike was advised to play on an unrestricted range of instruments, to become accustomed to the variety that as an artist she would inevitably encounter. Chopin dutifully extolled the virtues of hard work, yet he also recommended ‘not practising too much – it irritates the nerves’! He did, however, liberate Friederike’s technique. She enthused: ‘I’m now sitting wholly differently, not so high and much further from the piano, exactly as Chopin prefers, so that the arms can have freedom of movement, and the body stays motionless. He insists that the chest is much less restricted like this … and that my playing will have more repose.’ Economy of movement was, in fact, a ground-rule for Chopin. He criticised Liszt’s playing for its unnecessary expenditure of energy (which he attributed to the virtuoso’s habit of practising on a particularly heavy ‘silent’ keyboard when on tour). But he also suspected, prophetically, that with a less hectic lifestyle, Liszt might eventually become a great composer – ‘Liszt spreads himself too widely at the moment … if he settles down, there’s no telling what he might achieve.’

And, of course, Chopin firmly subscribed to many of the standard performance practices of the day. Pianists should aspire to be vocalists, to sing like Grisi, Tamburini and Lablache: ‘He treats every sound on the piano as if it were made by the throat, the hands as the lungs, so the fingers sing rather than play.’ Repeated passages (in waltzes, for example) should be varied and ornamented differently at every return, just as the reigning stars of the opera might do. Trills were likewise lovingly to be dwelled upon. He complained that the modest Friederike was insufficiently ‘coquettish’ in this regard: ‘You have a wonderful trill, but you need to show it off more!’

Chopin was particularly delighted with the way she played his own pieces: ‘You feel my music without affectation; you play it as I like it, as I hear it … you have admirable sensitivity.’ So, why have most of us never heard of Friederike Müller? She went home to Vienna in 1841, then returned to Paris for further study with Chopin in 1844-45, but her career never really took off. Soon after her marriage in 1849, her daughter Caroline was born; at that point, she apparently abandoned all ambition to be a professional pianist. Press reaction had been mixed. Some reviews of her performances had been laudatory, others lukewarm. But one especially damning notice seemed to have shaken her confidence. The critic for the Allgemeine Wiener Musikzeitung had declared that Friederike’s playing had a glaring deficiency: she was simply unable to play Chopin properly. No, I’m not making it up. It’s a pity she didn’t live long enough to be reminded of Sibelius’s celebrated saying that ‘no one has ever erected a statue to a critic’.

This feature originally appeared in the SUMMER 2025 issue of International Piano – Subscribe Today