Maria and Frédéric, getting closer
After bidding farewell to the Wodzinsky family in Dresden, and already on his way to Paris, Chopin detoured to Leipzig to pay a brief visit to a couple of friends and colleagues: Schumann and Mendelssohn. This gave time for one more event of an emotional nature to occur, which ended up overflowing with joy that year of 1835. A letter from Maria Wodzinska had been waiting for him for a long time in Paris. It was a very affectionate, almost tender note:
"How we miss you!!!! My brothers are dejected... Mom only talks to me about you... Mom, my father and my brothers embrace you tenderly... You have forgotten the pencil here, we keep it respectfully, like an heirloom..... Goodbye!"
Marienbad and Dresden
The expressions of affection from Mother Wodzinska and Maria did not stop throughout the winter. Thus, in the summer of the following year, Frederic again found himself enjoying the summer season with the Wodzinskys. But this time it was not one week but almost two months that he shared with them, first in Marienbad and then in Dresden, so that the occasions to be together multiplied. Long walks in the surroundings brought Maria and Frédéric closer together definitively.
Maria says "Yes"
The day before his departure, Frederic received Maria's "yes" to his marriage proposal. The day before, another yes from Countess Wodzinska, who asked to keep the engagement a secret until she had the opportunity to inform her husband.
Three days after the departure, and along with sending him some slippers embroidered by her, Maria added a postscript to a brother's letter:
"...We cannot take comfort from your departure... Do you miss your friends a little? I answer for you: yes. ...I need to believe so... Farewell. See you soon. Ah! if that could be as soon as possible!"
Chopin takes a second helping... Another year, blissful, is about to come to fruition.
Brilliant waltz in A-flat
During the three weeks he spent in Karlsbad in the company of his parents the previous summer, Chopin composed a mazurka, a polonaise, and a delicious waltz: the Waltz in A Flat, opus 34 No. 1.
The version is by the Austrian-Swiss pianist Ingolf Wunder.
