In the spring of 1848, the Philharmonic Society of London - barometer of the Empire's musical Establishment and 'English to the backbone' (Shaw) - extended Chopin the privilege of inviting him to play a concerto at one of their Monday evening gatherings in the Hanover Square Rooms. He refused. 'Their orchestra, like their roast beef or turtle soup, is strong and efficient, but that is all,' he wrote to Albert Grzymala, May 13th 1848. 'What I have said is not really a valid excuse: there is only one impossible circumstance - they never have more than one rehearsal, since everyone's time is so valuable just now, and that rehearsal is a public one.' His enemies delighted in reporting the story to his political/social disadvantage: 'Chopin, we are told, was invited to play at the Philharmonic, but declined' (Musical World, May 27th 1848).

Unlike his celebrated pianist-contemporaries - Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Liszt, Thalberg - Chopin, then, never figured personally in the annals of the Society. Nor, despite the wide-spread availability of his works through his German-born, Soho-based English publisher Christian Rudolph Wessel (1797-1885), was his music to be immediately favoured. During his lifetime, merely the F minor Concerto (April 3rd 1843, with Luise Dulcken [sister of Ferdinand David and Queen Victoria's piano teacher]), conducted by Cipriani Potter (billed as the first performance in England); and the second and third movements of the E minor (March 25th 1844, with Eduard Buddeus), conducted by Sir George Smart. 'The 40-hand dexterous power required for the effective execution of his works,' maintained the anonymous obituary writer of The Illustrated London News (October 27th 1849), 'seems to have dismayed pianists from attempting them.' Critics like 'the music monster' JW Davison must have felt smugly self-satisfied. Wasn't Chopin, after all, just 'a morbidly sensitive flea ... a dealer in the most absurd and hyperbolical extravagances ... an enthusiastic schoolboy' (Musical World, October 28th 1841), a delinquent 'doer of little things,' 'a sentimental drawing-room composer,' Mendelssohn's 'Chopinetto (Chopinettino?) and no more,' who 'by some means or other, was able to acquire the name of a musician at once profound and inventive' (Musical World obituary, November 10th 1849)?

In his History of the Philharmonic Society of London: 1813-1912 (London 1912), Myles Birket Foster claimed the 1843 F minor 'Grand Concerto' account as 'interesting [for having been] the first performance in public, in this country [England], of any of Chopin's music! and now [1912] how thoroughly well-known is each one of his fascinating compositions!' Between then and the end of the century, the two concertos enjoyed in all a dozen airings, followed in popularity by the A flat Polonaise Op 53 with four. These statistics can be compared with those for Charles Halle's Free Trade Hall concerts in Manchester, 1858-95, listing five performances of the E minor Concerto, three of the F minor, four of the Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise, and twelve, no less, of Op 53 (Life and Letters of Sir Charles Halle, London 1896, Appendix II). Contrary to popular fiction, the public performance of Chopin's compositions in Britain was far from instant: most do not begin to feature in the Society's programmes until the late 1870s/early 1880s, with the F minor Concerto revived only in 1881, following a break of almost forty years.

The Society's Chopin players were an increasingly starry gathering. Clara Schumann in the F minor. Charles Halle in the E minor under Wagner. Stavenhagen in the A flat Polonaise. Scharwenka in the F minor Fantasy. Sophie Menter in the Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise. And were to remain so, notwithstanding the volte face to come between January 1917 (a solo group from Pachmann) and May 1945 (the close of the 133rd season) when the Society, now Royal, opted in its wisdom to exclude all but one Chopin item - the E minor, with Rosenthal and Beecham (Queen's Hall, February 1st 1934) - preferring seven Emperors and a clutch of Rachmaninov and Brahms Twos.