Kimi no Tame ni Hiku Chopin

"Do not sparkle."

This depiction of Chopin is kind of ridiculous... I mean come on, he was basically a rock star in his time... extremely outgoing and charismatic. And here he feels uncomfortable playing in front of people he doesn't know? Really.

He was basically a rock star in terms of popularity, but my understanding was that unlike, say, Liszt, he didn't have a rock star personality at all and was not actually very outgoing.  His health was always pretty fragile too.

"Rock star" might be misleading in another way, too.  I mean, he was totally famous among everyone who mattered--but in those days, "everyone who mattered" wasn't a ton of people.  He was the rage of the "salons" of places like Paris, where he played in private homes (which is why they call it "chamber music") to small groups of people he would have been introduced to first and chatted with after.  He wasn't mostly a guy who played in big concert halls with big orchestras.  The wealthy and powerful and their young daughters would have been climbing over each other to get him to teach them piano though.

So this might be exaggerated, but not as much as you might think IMO.

This depiction of Chopin is kind of ridiculous... I mean come on, he was basically a rock star in his time... extremely outgoing and charismatic. And here he feels uncomfortable playing in front of people he doesn't know? Really.

Chopin's adorableee ;u;

Wai Wai! update