Paris Pianopolis

In 1830 the French king was dethroned, and a bourgeois government took the reins. This brought about a shift in Paris' artistic landscape and the Romantic movement swept through Paris, foregrounding writers, artists, and musicians with more liberal views who saw the artist as a hero. In music that hero was the piano virtuoso.

The new Romantic generation of pianists, like Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt cast a shadow over the previous greats like Herz and Kalkbrenner. Charles Valentin Alkan and Marie Pleyel were part of this generation of musicians who saw piano playing and composing as serious art, not frivolous entertainment.

In 1835 Liszt gave a brilliant concert, setting the bar for all future virtuosos. In the same year he fled Paris for Switzerland with his mistress, the married Countess Marie d'Agoult, who was pregnant with his child.

Liszt's flight to Switzerland left the field wide open for a new virtuoso hero. Chopin, who barely appeared in public and then only in salons, was not the candidate.

Sigismond Thalberg was. He arrived in Paris in 1836 and caused an uproar. Liszt was affronted and returned in the spring of 1837 to take up the challenge. The scene was set for a piano showdown.

Once again Liszt and his countess leave Paris making room for new up-and-coming pianists like the young Clara Wieck and Stephen Heller. Heller even moved to Paris to take advantage of this opportunity, but then changed his mind.

As usual Liszt couldn't resist the limelight and ended up abandoning the countess to perform in Vienna where he encountered a triumphant Marie Pleyel who hadn't been seen in concert since the mid-1830s.

Back in Paris Camille Pleyel opened a new piano manufactory complete with a concert hall. Henri Herz went one better, and his new piano manufactory included a large concert hall and a piano school.

Finally, in 1841 Liszt returned to Paris to give the first-ever solo piano recital - a concert unlike anything Paris had ever seen. No singers, no other musicians, just Liszt and his piano. Perhaps spurred on by Liszt's triumphant solo concerts, a pianist who had not been seen in concert in over 6 years dared to make a public appearance; Chopin performed in Pleyel Hall.

After Liszt's triumphal Paris recitals, a flood of wannabe virtuosos took over Paris. First, Thalberg returned after several years. Then came Theodore Döhler, the elegant charmer, followed by Alexander Dreyschock, whose fast and loud playing sent notes rocketing from the keyboard, and finally Leopold de Meyer who stunned audiences with the way he physically overwhelmed the piano.

In the summer of 1844, even the reclusive Alkan put in an appearance and wrote a hit that was played everywhere. Marie Pleyel repeated her 1839 Viennese success in Paris in 1845. To alleviate financial woes, Herz followed de Meyer's example by touring in the USA.

Chopin returned to the cocoon of his salon, but his respiratory illness worsened and in the last year of his life he neither composed nor touched a piano.