“Chopin’s music has sometimes been branded effeminate, or ‘salon music’: not quite serious, not quite healthy, not quite German, since it departs from the structural conventions of the great Viennese classical school. … Indeed, some of Chopin’s ardent defenders have implicitly bought into the idea that the music is weak and needs defending, trying to emphasize its seriousness (and manliness) by playing the works in sets.”