Variations on "Là ci darem la mano"

Frédéric Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" for piano and orchestra, Op.

[1][2] Chopin's work inspired Robert Schumann's famous exclamation: "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius.

Writing to his parents in Warsaw about his success, he said that "everyone clapped so loudly after each variation that I had difficulty hearing the orchestral tutti.

Robert Schumann (who was born only 3 months after Chopin) first heard the Variations by the then-unknown Polish composer at a performance by Julius Knorr at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 27 October 1831.

This famously caused him to declare, through the voice of his alter ego Eusebius, "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius", in the 7 December 1831 edition of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.

[9] Schumann's teacher (and future father-in-law) Friedrich Wieck published a very positive review of the Variations in the German periodical Caecilia.

In a letter to a friend, Chopin wrote that Wieck, "instead of being clever, is very stupid" and that he did not want his musical integrity to "die" because of "the imagination of that ... stubborn German”.

The work, as arranged by John Lanchbery, forms the first part of the music for Frederick Ashton's 1976 ballet A Month in the Country.