Chopin: Etudes, Opp. 10 and 25

Chopin was to inherit from his father a fierce sense of loyalty to Poland, a feeling that he fostered largely in self-imposed exile, since the greater part of his career was to be spent in Paris. His early education, however, was in Warsaw, where his father had become a teacher at a newly established school. He was able to develop his already precocious musical abilities with piano lessons from the eccentric Adalbert Zywny, a violinist from Bohemia, who shared Nicolas Chopin's enthusiasm for Poland and was able to inculcate in his pupil a sound respect for the great composers of the eighteenth century.