Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - From the Reviewer's Notebook

Chopin's birthplace at Żela zowa Wola about 50 kms from Warsaw I decided to make the effort to attend the birthday recital at Żela zowa  Wola on an uncompromisingly and rather abnormal freezing day on 1st March (-10C). Brrrr.... The romantic intimacy I remember of my first visit to the  dwórek  and hamlet in the early 1990s has rather disappeared with a quite understandable development of the site to cope with the freedom of the global touristic movement that Poland now enjoys - restaurant, ticket hall, shop, recital and lecture theatre - the full unfolding of facilities for visitors but with the inevitable loss of some of the romantic poetry and mystery of the domain.  I would like to quote my first impressions of what was for me a deeply poetic place. In an access of nostalgia the extract comes from my book about Poland entitled  A Country in the Moon (Granta -London 2008).                                                                           *  *  *  *  *