When Chopin entered, an amateur, a young barrister, was going to rehearse Moscheles’ E flat major Concerto.  Schnabel, on seeing the newcomer, asked him to try the piano.  Chopin sat down and played some variations which astonished and delighted the Capellmeister, who had not heard him for four years, so much that he overwhelmed him with expressions of admiration.  As the poor amateur began to feel nervous, Chopin was pressed on all sides to take that gentleman’s place in the evening.  Although he had not practised for some weeks he consented, drove to the hotel, fetched the requisite music, rehearsed, and in the evening performed the Romanza and Rondo of his E minor Concerto and an improvisation on a theme from Auber’s “La Muette” ("Masaniello").  At the rehearsal the “Germans” admired his playing; some of them he heard whispering “What a light touch he has!” but not a word was said about the composition.  The amateurs did not know whether it was good or bad.  Titus Woyciechowski heard one of them say “No doubt he can play, but he can’t compose.”  There was, however, one gentleman who praised the novelty of the form, and the composer naively declares that this was the person who understood him best.  Speaking of the professional musicians, Chopin remarks that, with the exception of Schnabel, “the Germans” were at a loss what to think of him.  The Polish peasants use the word “German” as an invective, believe that the devil speaks German and dresses in the German fashion, and refuse to take medicine because they hold it to be an invention of the Germans and, consequently, unfit for Christians.  Although Chopin does not go so far, he is by no means free from this national antipathy.  Let his susceptibility be ruffled by Germans, and you may be sure he will remember their nationality.  Besides old Schnabel there was among the persons whose acquaintance Chopin made at Breslau only one other who interests us, and interests us more than that respectable composer of church music; and this one was the organist and composer Adolph Frederick Hesse, then a young man of Chopin’s age.  Before long the latter became better acquainted with him.  In his account of his stay and playing in the Silesian capital, he says of him only that “the second local connoisseur, Hesse, who has travelled through the whole of Germany, paid me also compliments.”

Chopin continued his journey on November 10, and on November 12 had already plunged into Dresden life.  Two features of this, in some respects quite unique, life cannot but have been particularly attractive to our traveller—­namely, its Polish colony and the Italian opera.  The former owed its origin to the connection of the house of Saxony with the crown of Poland; and the latter, which had been patronised by the Electors and Kings for hundreds of years, was not disbanded till 1832.  In 1817, it is true, Weber, who had received a call for that purpose, founded a German opera at Dresden, but the Italian opera retained the favour of the Court and of a great part of the public, in fact, was the spoiled child that looked down upon her younger sister, poor Cinderella.  Even a Weber had to fight hard to keep his own, indeed, sometimes failed to do so, in the rivalry with the ornatissimo Signore Cavaliere Morlacchi, primo maestro della capella Reale.