Piano Concerto no. 2 in F minor, op. 21

Chopin wrote the F minor concerto in 1829–30, while in love with Constantia Gładkowska, a singing student at the Warsaw Conservatory; he told a friend that he had been thinking of her while composing the slow movement. He played it in Warsaw on 17 March 1830. The score was lost during 1830–31 and had to be reconstructed, which delayed publication until 1836 and gave the work its misleading number. The dedication went to Delfina Potocka. The second theme of the first movement returned years later, transformed, in one of the nocturnes.

The Warsaw performance of 17 March 1830 was given at the National Theatre; before it Chopin had played the concerto at his parents' home with a small orchestra and invited guests, and a journalist who was there wrote it up, so that the work was praised in print before the public had heard it.