August 18, encouraged by his triumph, Chopin gave a second concert on the same stage.  This time he played the Krakowiak and his talent for composition was discussed by the newspapers.  “He plays very quietly, without the daring elan which distinguishes the artist from the amateur,” said one; “his defect is the non-observance of the indication of accent at the beginning of musical phrases.”  What was then admired in Vienna was explosive accentuations and piano drumming.  The article continues:  “As in his playing he was like a beautiful young tree that stands free and full of fragrant blossoms and ripening fruits, so he manifested as much estimable individuality in his compositions where new figures and passages, new forms unfolded themselves.”  This rather acute critique, translated by Dr. Niecks, is from the Wiener “Theaterzeitung” of August 20, 1829.  The writer of it cannot be accused of misoneism, that hardening of the faculties of curiousness and prophecy—­that semi-paralysis of the organs of hearing which afflicts critics of music so early in life and evokes rancor and dislike to novelties.  Chopin derived no money from either of his concerts.

By this time he was accustomed to being reminded of the lightness and exquisite delicacy of his touch and the originality of his style.  It elated him to be no longer mistaken for a pupil and he writes home that “my manner of playing pleases the ladies so very much.”  Thismanner never lost its hold over female hearts, and the airs, caprices and little struttings of Frederic are to blame for the widely circulated legend of his effeminate ways.  The legend soon absorbed his music, and so it has come to pass that this fiction, begotten of half fact and half mental indolence, has taken root, like the noxious weed it is.  When Rubinstein, Tausig and Liszt played Chopin in passional phrases, the public and critics were aghast.  This was a transformed Chopin indeed, a Chopin transposed to the key of manliness.  Yet it is the true Chopin.  The young man’s manners were a trifle feminine but his brain was masculine, electric, and his soul courageous.  His Polonaises, Ballades, Scherzi and Etudes need a mighty grip, a grip mental and physical.

Chopin met Czerny.  “He is a good man, but nothing more,” he said of him.  Czerny admired the young pianist with the elastic hand and on his second visit to Vienna, characteristically inquired, “Are you still industrious?” Czerny’s brain was a tireless incubator of piano exercises, while Chopin so fused the technical problem with the poetic idea, that such a nature as the old pedagogue’s must have been unattractive to him.  He knew Franz, Lachner and other celebrities and seems to have enjoyed a mild flirtation with Leopoldine Blahetka, a popular young pianist, for he wrote of his sorrow at parting from her.  On August 19 he left with friends for Bohemia, arriving at Prague two days later.  There he saw everything and met Klengel, of canon fame, a