Maria Szymanowska (1789 – 1831)
Maria Szymanowska was born Marianna Agata Wołowska in Warsaw into a prosperous family with interests in the arts. She apparently began learning piano at an early age. Her first public recitals were in Warsaw and Paris in 1810, which is also the year that she married Józef Szymanowski. Three children followed in the next couple years.
Maria Szymanowska toured all over Europe and was highly regarded as a piano virtuoso. She established a wide web of connections with composers and poets of that era, including Rossini, Cherubini, Hummel, John Field, and Goethe (who was said to be in love with her). She eventually settled in St. Petersburg as court pianist to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. She died there in 1831 during a cholera epidemic.
Most of Maria Szymanowska’s compositions are for piano and for voice with piano accompaniment. She wrote about hundred piano pieces and may have had an influence on Chopin.
This is Maria Szymanowska’s evocative Nocturne in B♭ performed by Macedonian pianist Natasha Stojanovska.