In Paris, Edward Wolff befriended his slightly older compatriot Frédéric Chopin, who, like him, lived in Paris as a Polish exile. Out of this friendship - and admiration - came perhaps the greatest homage in Romantic piano music: the Grand Allegro de Concert, a work that hardly has its equal in terms of monumentality: in almost 50 pages, Wolff plunges you into Chopin's sound world, as if a new work by Chopin had been discovered. In addition, Wolff was active as a pianist and composer with his very own style. He was a formidable rival of Liszt and Thalberg.

The last of an exceptional generation of piano innovators, Adolf von Henselt was born in Schwabach, Bavaria, in 1814. His music is not only exceptionally difficult, but also possesses a poetic beauty. Henselt is sometimes and somewhat unfortunately called the German Chopin or the Chopin of the North, but in fact he has a style of his own. Among his masterpieces are the extraordinary Variations op. 1, once a favourite piece of Clara Schumann-Wieck, and the magnificent Ballade op. 31.

A pupil of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt, Carl Czerny is known for his piano studies, but as one of the most prolific composers of all time, he left an exceptional oeuvre. He wrote, among others, 11 piano sonatas, 20 masses, 4 requiems, 6 symphonies, between 20 and 40 string quartets, other chamber music, but also performance pieces for students and for himself.

Henry Litolff has led an exceptional life, in which he was persecuted for abduction, wandered through Europe in poverty, was one of the most celebrated pianists of a city that was more or less populated by pianists, until he failed as an opera composer and died in total oblivion. Besides four serious piano concertos, Litolff has become known mainly for salon music, which, contrary to the genre, is averse to sentimentality, but excels in a cheerful hyper-virtuosity.