[Letter from Felix Meldelssohn to his sister Fanny Hensel]

On the same day, after I had accompanied the Hensels to Delitsch, Chopin arrived: he intended to stay only one day and so we spent it together making music. I cannot deny, dear Fanny, that I have lately found that you did not do him full justice in the opinion you expressed; perhaps he was not in the right mood for playing when you heard him, as may quite often be the case with him. But on me his playing has again made an enchanting impression and I am convinced that if you and father had heard some of his better pieces played as he played them to me you would both say the same. There is something fundamentally personal and at the same time so very masterly in his playing that he may be called a really perfect virtuoso; and as every kind of perfection is welcome and gratifying to me, this day was a most agreeable one, although completely different from the previous ones which I have spent with the Hensels. It was a joy to be once again with a proper musician, not one of those half-virtuosos and half-classics who would like to combine "the honours of virtue and the pleasures of vice" in music, but with someone who has his own perfectly defined manner.