an account of it; in fact,
he seems to have been enjoying real halcyon days. He had a full house,
but played with as little nervousness as if he had been playing at home.
The first Allegro of the Concerto went very smoothly, and the audience
rewarded him with thundering applause. Of the reception of the Adagio
and Rondo we learn nothing except that in the pause between the first
and second parts the connoisseurs and amateurs came on the stage, and
complimented him in the most flattering terms on his playing. The great
success, however, of the evening was his performance of the Fantasia on
Polish airs. "This time I understood myself, the orchestra understood
me, and the audience understood us." This is quite in the bulletin style
of conquerors; it has a ring of "veni, vidi, vici" about it. Especially
the mazurka at the end of the piece produced a great effect, and Chopin
was called back so enthusiastically that he was obliged to bow his
acknowledgments four times. Respecting the bowing he says: "I believe I
did it yesterday with a certain grace, for Brandt had taught me how to
do it properly." In short, the concert-giver was in the best of
spirits, one is every moment expecting him to exclaim: "Seid umschlungen
Millionen, diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt." He is pleased with himself and
Streicher's piano on which he had played; pleased with Soliva, who
kept both soloist and orchestra splendidly in order; pleased with
the impression the execution of the overture made; pleased with
the blue-robed, fay-like Miss Wolkow; pleased most of all with Miss
Gladkowska, who "wore a white dress and roses in her hair, and was
charmingly beautiful." He tells his friend that:

she never sang so well as on that evening (except the aria in
"Agnese"). You know "O! quante lagrime per te versai." The
tutto detesto down to the lower b came out so magnificently
that Zielinski declared this b alone was worth a thousand
ducats.

In Vienna the score and parts of the Krakowiak had been found to be full
of mistakes, it was the same with the Concerto in Warsaw. Chopin himself
says that if Soliva had not taken the score with him in order to correct
it, he (Chopin) did not know what might have become of the Concerto
on the evening of the concert. Carl Mikuli, who, as well as his
fellow-pupil Tellefsen, copied many of Chopin's MSS., says that they
were full of slips of the pen, such as wrong notes and signatures,
omissions of accidentals, d