An unknown waltz believed to have been written almost 200 years ago by the legendary composer Frederic Chopin has been discovered in a New York museum. Robinson McClellan, a curator at the Morgan Library & Museum, came upon the music on a card bearing Chopin's name inside a vault before showing it to Jeffrey Kallberg, a Chopin expert at the University of Pennsylvania, per the New York Times. The pair concluded the music was written by the Polish composer between 1830 and 1835, when he was in his early 20s, reports NBC News. Though the music isn't signed by Chopin, it's written "in his own hand," McClellan tells the BBC.
"What's not entirely sure is that it's music that he composed," says McClellan, though he adds he feels "98% sure" that it is. "Many people who have heard it already feel in their gut this sounds like Chopin," he tells the BBC. Chinese pianist Lang Lang, who recorded the waltz for the Times, says "it sounds very much like Chopin, with a very dramatic darkness turning into a positive thing." Indeed, "it is one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine."
Pianist Sir Stephen Hough, who's recorded all of Chopin's existing waltzes, agrees the music is likely Chopin's own work, per the BBC. He compares it to a sketch for a John Keats poem: not quite finished, with "a few spelling mistakes, but somehow you can still tell that it has that genius there." He adds Chopin hid away much work from his youth, "which was published after his death against his wishes, and this probably belongs in that drawer." Chopin, who primarily wrote piano solos, is believed to have penned 28 waltzes before his death in 1849 at age 39. Eleven of those have been lost to history, per NBC. (More Frederic Chopin stories.)
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