Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the early Romantic period, born 1 March 1810 near Warsaw and died 17 October 1849 in Paris. A child prodigy, he left Poland in 1830 and spent most of his career in Paris, supporting himself largely through composition and teaching rather than frequent public performance, preferring the intimacy of the salon to the concert hall. He wrote almost exclusively for solo piano, producing an enduring body of work including sonatas, nocturnes, études, preludes, mazurkas, polonaises, waltzes, and two piano concertos, and his long relationship with the writer George Sand shaped much of his mature career.

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Chopin transformed the technical and expressive vocabulary of the piano, fusing Polish folk idioms such as the mazurka and polonaise with an intensely personal harmonic language built on chromaticism and rubato. His music set new standards for pianistic color and structural freedom, influencing composers from Liszt and Wagner to Debussy and Scriabin, and his works remain central to the concert and competition repertoire worldwide.

Compare recordings piece by piece — 217 works of Frédéric Chopin with more than one performance on the site →

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederic-Chopin