From Feb 22, 2010 to March 1st 2010, Poland will be celebrating Chopin's 200th birthday. Historical sources suggest two possible dates of birth — either Feb. 22, as noted in church records, or March 1, which was mentioned in letters between him and his mother and is considered the more probable date. Since no one is sure, Poland is marking both. A series of concerts in Warsaw and Zelazowa Wola will take place over those eight days featuring world-class musicians.
We are pretty far from Poland but, we would like to celebrate his birthday here in Boise, after all he is my countryman.
In 1926, a bronze statue of Chopin designed by sculptor Wacław Szymanowski in 1907, was erected in the upper part of Warsaw's Royal Baths (Łazienki) Park, adjacent to Ujazdów Avenue (Aleje Ujazdowskie). The statue was originally to have been erected in 1910, on the centenary of Chopin's birth, but its execution was delayed by controversy about the design, then by the outbreak of World War I. On 31 May 1940, during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, the statue was destroyed by the Nazis. It was reconstructed after the war, in 1958. Since 1959, free piano recitals of Chopin's compositions have been performed at the statue's base on summer Sunday afternoons. The stylized willow over Chopin's seated figure echoes a pianist's hand and fingers. Until 2007, the statue was the world's tallest monument erected to Chopin.
While in Warsaw in 2005 we managed to atent two of the concerts. That was the beginning of the season. They start mid may and we were leaving beginning of June.
I took both of this pictures on two different occasionns. The informations above I found on Wikipedia.
After his death on October 17,1849, his heart was removed and preserved in alcohol, perhaps brandy. His sister later took it in an urn to Warsaw, where it was sealed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście, beneath an inscription from Matthew VI:21: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Chopin's heart has remained there—except for a period during World War II, when it was removed for safekeeping—within the church that was rebuilt after its virtual destruction during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The church stands only a short distance from Chopin's last Polish residence, the Krasiński Palace at Krakowskie Przedmieście 5.
This fact was not very publicized in Poland and I did not know this until 1992, aldought I was in the church numeruos times with family and friends visiting Warsaw.
