Chopin. Romantic salon

Chopin. Romantic salon is a temporary exhibition project for Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland.

A treat awaits Chopin fans in the capital at the Royal Castle’s exhibition dedicated to the pianist in the run up to the XVIII International Chopin Competition. The exhibition gathers items connected to the composer from Poland, France and Spain, including handwritten musical scores, portraits of people important in his life and his death mask. Labelled Chopin and the Romantic Salon, the exhibition shines a spotlight on the important institution in the social life of the 19th century, which was the salon, a kind of moveable meeting place for the nineteenth century jet-set. The central exhibit, Henryk Siemiradzki's painting 'Chopin in the salon of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł in 1829’, shows this milieu well. On loan from the private collection of John Radziwiłł who lives in New York, the canvass was shown in Poland at various venues in the 1880s. Accompanying the exhibition is a series of piano recitals by world-class pianists, including Poland’s Szymon Nehring, who was a finalist in the 2015 International Chopin Competition. The prestigious competition comes round only once every five years and is regarded as the World Cup and Olympics of the piano world rolled into one.