Why Chopin agreed to coach Mikuli is not certainly because of the romanticised performance of the Scherzo Op. 31, immediately after which Chopin decided to accept him among his pupils. In fact, before one could play in Chopin's presence, he had to have access to him! Tellefsen, Mikuli's fellow, had to wait long before meeting Chopin, and, look out, only after a recommendation through George Sand, at the time the mistress of Chopin's life. Most probably Mikuli was soon admitted, simply because he was Polish even if of Armenian origin. Chopin realized at once that the 23 y. o. young man was not stupid at all (his acute intelligence is evident from his Foreword), and this fact together with the possibility to speak his own beloved mother-language more frequently, persuaded him to become available without regard to piano-attitudes of the young man. It is surely to exclude that from an artistic point of view Mikuli was the favourite pupil. (For further information, cf. J.-J. Eigeldinger, Chopin vu par ses élèves, nouv. éd. mise à jour, Paris [Fayard] 2006, p. 222s.)

Mikuli's edition, published by Kistner from 1880, remains as a whole the sole valuable edition completed by a single man. Unfortunately, he did not follow a philological criterion, even if that year the first Revisionsberichte, by E. Rudorff, began to be published as a critical commentary to the first critical edition printed by Breitkopf & Härtel. We shall turn again to Chopin's editions in another page.

Unfortunately this edition is not available any more, except the first volume (Mazurkas) reprinted in 1987 by Dover Publications, Inc., with a new English translation of Foreword. We hoped, at the beginning, that first volume announced (a very praiseworthy enterprise) the reprint of all the 17 volumes, but, after a second miscellaneous volume, Dover preferred to print other editions completely useless. It is still on the marketplace the American Mikuli's edition, with historical and analytical comments by James Huneker, printed by G. Schirmer, Inc. (from 1895), in 15 books. But it is a newly composed edition containing very bad errors, in other words to be avoided: for example, in the ix Book, Prelude no. 8, whereas in Kistner's edition the bars 6 and 20 are identical and their notation is correct, in the Schirmer's one they have a different notation because of disgraceful and senseless alterations not due to Mikuli!

After a brief carrier as a concert pianist (it would be interesting to find out some reviews of his concerts), in 1858 Mikuli settled definitively in Lwow (now Lviv), becoming director of the Conservatory, and he devoted himself both to composition and teaching. Among his pupils there are famous pianists' names, like Aleksander Michałowski, Maurycy Rosenthal and, lastly, Raoul Koczalski (1885-1948), who, because of J.-J Eigeldinger's tireless efforts, from some time has come back to the scene like the sole repository of the authentic chopinian tradition. The trouble is that J.-J. Eigeldinger is not pianist at all (you can understand it from his turn of writing), and with the examples he got Pierre Goy to play on the cd attached to Interpréter Chopin, actes du colloque des 25 et 26 mai 2005, Paris (Cité de la musique) 2006, he shows both to ignore completely what is “tempo rubato”, and which is the difference between tempo and metre, metre and rhythm; Eigeldinger is not alone indeed, because the most of the pianists are in the same condition, but none of them is the most revered among all the chopinologists. Since we intend to come back to the question elsewhere, in the meanwhile the reader may consider to be good the judgment Arthur Rubinstein passed on Koczalski: «An ex-child prodigy who was covered with medals when he was six, some of them hanging on his little bottom; he lived in Germany and developed into a very bad pianist» (cf. A. Rubinstein, My many years, London [Johnathan Cape] 1980, p. 439). Perhaps what Eigeldinger and Koczalski have in common are the many recognitions; but in order to find place to all the honours conferred upon Eigeldinger we ought to change “little” with “large”. Nevertheless, Chopin vu par ses élèves is an important work, founded on careful researches and written with an almost maniacal accuracy (of course, there is some carelessness: for ex., as bibliographical reference is quoted “LACHMUND” which is not in the bibliography – we think it refers to Carl Lachmund's Diary edited by Alan Walker you can find on line).

As we have just pointed out elsewhere (J. Lhévinne, Principi di tecnica pianistica, ed. it. a cura di Fr. L. Viero, Corsico [Edizioni del Cygno] 1999, p. xi), very rarely the pupils are trustworthy witnesses of their teachers; anyhow, what Mikuli tells us, helps in outlining in a quite definite way the new piano school of Chopin.]

WARNING! Here we may not reproduce the Dovers' English translation because it is copyrighted. But you can find a partial translation by clicking on the link below. Anyhow, we translate our notes.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050625082425/http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/2217/mikuli.htm

FOREWORD

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