A Classical Music Discovery

As The Times’s classical music reporter, I don’t often get “news” from long-dead composers.

But I recently learned that an unknown waltz by the eminent composer Chopin, written nearly 200 years ago, had been discovered in the vault of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. It was unearthed in a collection of memorabilia, alongside postcards signed by Picasso and letters from Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

We published our exclusive story on the discovery today. And here’s a special treat: The superstar pianist Lang Lang recorded the waltz for The Times. You can watch his performance here.

The story of the long-lost waltz starts at the Morgan on a late-spring day, when the curator and composer Robinson McClellan came across an unusual musical manuscript. The piece was moody and melancholic, and a conspicuous name was written across the top: Chopin.

McClellan took a photo on his iPhone so he could play the piece back at home on his electric piano. He also sent a photo to Jeffrey Kallberg, a Chopin scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

“My jaw dropped,” Kallberg told me. “I knew I had never seen this before.”

In September, the Morgan’s experts invited me to view the manuscript, which they had authenticated by analyzing the paper, ink and musical style. It was much smaller than I had imagined — a pockmarked scrap about the size of an index card. Chopin had famously tiny penmanship, and he packed a lot into this little piece.

As an amateur pianist, I grew up adoring Chopin’s music. His waltzes, nocturnes, ballades and mazurkas are a dreamy realm of nostalgia, longing, suffering and bliss. He is still one of music’s most beloved figures. (His heart, pickled in a jar of alcohol, is encased in a church in Warsaw.)