I like to employ some free hours in the evening in making
myself acquainted with Chopin's studies and his other
compositions, and find much charm in the originality and
national colouring of their motivi; but my fingers always
stumble over certain hard, inartistic, and to me
incomprehensible modulations, and the whole is often too
sweetish for my taste, and appears too little worthy of a man
and a trained musician.

And again--

I am a sincere admirer of Chopin's originality; he has
furnished pianists with matter of the greatest novelty and
attractiveness. But personally I dislike the artificial,
often forced modulations; my fingers stumble and fall over
such passages; however much I may practise them, I cannot
execute them without tripping.

The first criticism on Chopin's publications which I met with in the
French musical papers is one on the "Variations," Op. 12. It appeared in
the "Revue musicale" of January 26, 1834. After this his new works are
pretty regularly noticed, and always favourably. From what has been said
it will be evident that Karasowski made a mistake when he wrote that
Chopin's compositions began to find a wide circulation as early as the
year 1832.

Much sympathy has been undeservedly bestowed on the composer by many,
because they were under the impression that he had had to contend with
more than the usual difficulties. Now just the reverse was the case.
Most of his critics were well-disposed towards him, and his fame spread
fast. In 1834 (August 13) a writer in the "Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung" remarks that Chopin had the good fortune to draw upon himself
sooner than others the attention not only of the pianists, although of
these particularly, but also of a number of the musicians generally. And
in 1836 even Rellstab, Chopin's most adverse critic, says: "We entertain
the hope of hearing a public performance of the Concerto [the second,
Op. 21] in the course of the winter, for now it is a point of honour for
every pianist to play Chopin." The composer, however, cannot be said to
have enjoyed popularity; his works were relished only by the few, not
by the many. Chopin's position as a pianist and composer at the point we
have reached in the history of his life (1833-1834) is well described by
a writer in the "Revue musicale" of May 15, 1834:--

Chopin [he says] has opened up for himself a new route, and
from the first moment of his appearanc