Chopin Salon
Chopin Painted by Candlelight
A salon in the heart of Warsaw, given over entirely to listening.
At Smolna 14, Chopin Salon keeps one quiet promise: that Chopin’s music should be heard the way it is felt, up close. It is not a concert hall and never wished to be. Here the audience sits near the piano, close enough to follow the music as it forms.
There is no stage to speak of, no distance between the piano and the people who came to hear it. The flame moves, the music begins, and for a while the city outside goes silent.
The evenings here are called Chopin Painted by Candlelight. Each one is intimate by design: an audience seated close to the music, one instrument, and the preludes and nocturnes that have outlived every century since they were written.
Between sound and silence
In a candlelit salon in Warsaw, music returns every evening.
People arrive carrying their own stories, longings, and silences.
For a little while, they listen together. Then they leave.
What remains after the audience leaves is the living material for this book.
Inspired by Frédéric Chopin’s twenty-four Preludes and the lives that have left their mark at Chopin Salon, these literary portraits explore the space between sound and silence, the traces of a presence, and moments that never end with the final note.
They reveal something about themselves.
And something about us.
Because some encounters last longer than an evening.
Listen to the 24 Preludes →The hands at the piano
The Salon lives through the artists who return to it, evening after evening.
Evenings by candlelight
Come and listen
Closer to the music than any concert hall. Everything you need to join us is below.