From his teenage debut in Vienna to his premature death in 1849 in Paris, this Polish expatriate composer made his name on the piano. He was a virtuoso performer, a highly sought-after instructor to Parisian elite and a composer whose body of preludes, etudes and mazurkas are still a requirement for successive generations of prodigies. Soloists as distinct as Murray Perahia, Maurizio Pollini and Yuja Wang have all had to grapple with Chopin’s canon, which requires both formidable technical dexterity and delicate nuance.
