The Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, where the heart of Fryderyk Chopin is interred, is holding the inauguration of Chopin’s 200th birthday anniversary commemoration today.

After a Roman Catholic Mass celebrated by the Primate of Poland, Archbishop Henryk Muszynski, French pianist Marc Laforet, laureate of the 1985 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, will perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor, with Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by Wojciech Rodek.

Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, accompanied by the First Lady, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Speakers of both Houses of the Parliament and the Mayor of Warsaw are expected to attend.



Later in the day, a mass is to be celebrated in the nearby Church of the Nuns of the Visitation where Chopin played the organ in his teens.
The day’s programme also includes a concert at the National Opera with Poland’s Sinfonia Iuventus under the famous Polish conductor Jerzy Semkow performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E minor (with the French pianist Francois-Rene Duchable as soloist).

Chopin was born 200 years ago in Zelazowa Wola, some 70 kilometres west of Warsaw.

The exact date of his birth continues to be subject to debate. An entry in the record of births of the parish church in Brochow near Zelazowa Wola, where Chopin was baptized, as well as a birth certificate signed by the composer's parents give the date of 22 February 1810.

In the composer’s family home, however, Fryderyk's birthday was celebrated on March 1 and it is this date that is now almost universally recognized as the date of Chopin’s birth.


The composer was the second child in the family of Nicolas (Mikolaj) Chopin, a Frenchman by birth who left the French province of Lorraine in his late teens, came to Poland, took part in the Kosciuszko anti-Tsarist uprising and in 1802 moved to Zelazowa Wola where he became a tutor in the family of Count Fryderyk Skarbek. There, the composer's father married a Polish noblewoman, Justyna Krzyzanowska, who was in charge of the Skarbeks’ household affairs. There were four children in the family: Ludwika (born 1807), Fryderyk (1810), Izabela (1811) and Emilia (1812). (mk/mmj)