On 28 October 2026, one of London’s most distinguished private clubs will revisit a cultural mystery the capital has largely forgotten: the disappearance and eventual recovery of the Chopin monument presented to Britain by Poland more than half a century ago.
The National Liberal Club on Whitehall will host Rescuing Chopin in London, an evening combining a live recital by Polish pianist Artur Haftman, a theatrical performance and a reception built around the extraordinary history of the bronze statue. Presented to Britain in 1975, the monument vanished from public view for almost three decades before being found lying face-down in a storage area beneath Waterloo Bridge. It was later restored and returned to the South Bank, where it now stands at the Southbank Centre.
The event is organised by Business Social Club, the invitation-only network founded by Renata Kaminska, according to a release seen by The WP Times. Organisers describe the programme not as a conventional concert but as a hybrid of recital, theatre, historical narration and professional networking, aimed particularly at London’s business and diplomatic communities. The story of the lost and rediscovered statue will provide the narrative thread running through the evening.
Proceeds will support Homewards, Prince William’s five-year programme, launched in 2023, which seeks to demonstrate that homelessness can be made rare, brief and unrepeated. The Polish Cultural Institute in London has also agreed in principle to support the event. The evening comes during a period of renewed attention to Chopin’s legacy, ahead of the centenary of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in 2027.
Rescuing Chopin in London: the recital, the theatre and the reception
The performance folds three distinct strands into one evening. At its heart is a live piano recital by Artur Haftman, the Polish concert pianist who serves as Artistic Director of the London International Chopin Competition, which he co-founded. Born in Poland in 1994, Haftman trained at the Royal College of Music in London under Professor Dmitri Alexeev and has taken solo recitals across the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovakia, performing at venues including St Martin-in-the-Fields, Steinway Hall and St Mary's Perivale. He is a prize-winner of numerous international competitions and is widely admired for his Chopin interpretations — a fitting choice for an evening in the composer's name.
Around the music, professional actors stage the monument's disappearance and recovery as drama rather than dry lecture, weaving historic photographs and narration through the performance. The organisers say Maja Walentynowicz, a finalist of The Voice of Poland, will perform a ballad commissioned specially for the occasion, written in response to the statue's long journey home.
A networking reception follows, pitched at diplomats, business leaders and invited guests. This is the detail that sets the evening apart from an ordinary concert: it is designed as much for connection and conversation as for listening. According to the organiser's release, proceeds will support Homewards — the homelessness programme launched by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in June 2023, which works across six flagship UK locations, including the London borough of Lambeth. Neither the Royal Foundation nor Homewards is listed as a co-organiser of the evening.
The lost Chopin monument: how a London statue vanished for decades
The monument at the centre of the evening is genuine, and its history is remarkable enough to carry a play. Sculpted by Bronisław Kubica, the bronze depicts Chopin seated, and it came to Britain in 1975 as a gift from the Polish nation — a thank-you for British sacrifice in the defeat of Nazi Germany, carrying the inscription "For your freedom and ours." The statue is said to contain an urn of earth from Chopin's birthplace in Poland. It was first unveiled that year near the Royal Festival Hall, by Princess Alice.
Then it disappeared. During redevelopment work on the South Bank the statue was taken down, and for years its whereabouts were effectively a blank — declared lost, absent from public view, slipping out of the city's memory. It was eventually found lying face-down in an underground storage space beneath Waterloo Bridge.
Its recovery in 2010 owed everything to the persistence of Dr Marek Stella-Sawicki, then chairman of the Polish Heritage Society, who pursued a lengthy mission to track the sculpture down, working alongside the Polish Embassy, Lady Cholmondeley of the Chopin Society and a consultant for English Heritage. Once recovered, the bronze was sent to Poland for restoration and unveiled a second time — at the Southbank Centre in May 2011, in the presence of the Polish Ambassador — where it stands today.
Stella-Sawicki later turned the search into a stage play, Rescuing Chopin, the piece this soirée draws upon. Earlier stagings have played to full houses, including a performance at the Polish Social and Cultural Centre (POSK) in London and another in Worcester. The London evening carries the story into one of the capital's most storied rooms.
Chopin Competition centenary: why the timing matters
The choice of date is not incidental. The International Chopin Piano Competition — held in Warsaw and among the most prestigious contests in classical music — marks its official centenary in 2027, the culmination of a multi-year run of anniversary events already under way since the 2025 edition. An evening celebrating Chopin's legacy and the Anglo-Polish cultural bond lands neatly ahead of that milestone, and the organisers are positioning it as an early note struck in the anniversary year to come.
The organiser's release also states that the Polish Cultural Institute in London has agreed in principle to partner the event. The Institute is part of Poland's diplomatic mission — an arm of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, based on Bouverie Street — dedicated to promoting Polish culture and heritage to British audiences and building bridges between cultural and academic institutions in both countries. Such backing, if confirmed, would lend the evening institutional weight beyond a private gathering.
The National Liberal Club: a short history of the Whitehall venue
The National Liberal Club carries its own considerable history, and it is part of the evening's appeal. It was founded in 1882 by the Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, conceived as a more accessible club for Liberal Party campaigners following the expansion of the electorate — famously intended as "a home for democracy, void of the class distinction" associated with other London clubs of the day.
Its riverside clubhouse at 1 Whitehall Place, designed by the architect Alfred Waterhouse and completed in 1887, remains the second-largest club building ever raised in London. Overlooking the Thames, it is often said to boast "the most splendid terrace in all of London." The club's roll of members has included seven Prime Ministers — Winston Churchill and Ramsay MacDonald among them — alongside writers from H.G. Wells and Bram Stoker to Dylan Thomas.
Today the club describes itself as a home for politics, arts, culture and sport, with a membership drawn from civil servants, parliamentarians, scientists, academics, actors, authors, journalists and business people. Its function rooms regularly host recitals and cultural evenings, which makes it a natural fit for a night that marries a concert programme with a networking floor. For the Chopin soirée, that mix of grandeur and sociability is the point.
The Business Social Club: who is behind the event
The evening is organised by the Business Social Club, founded by Renata Kaminska as a deliberately selective, invitation-led circle for professionals and business owners. Its premise is a reaction against the noise of conventional networking: rather than crowded, transactional events, it favours smaller, curated gatherings where people connect through shared values, trust and unhurried conversation, with relationships that evolve naturally into collaboration or friendship. The club draws members from different industries but united by a common approach, and is guided by a founder and an advisory board that safeguards its culture and standards. Its programme runs from intimate, relaxed gatherings with no fixed agenda to curated sessions led by members or invited experts, offering perspective and behind-the-scenes access without a corporate tone. Seen in that light, the Chopin soirée — combining culture, philanthropy and international friendship in a landmark London setting — is among the club's most ambitious public undertakings, and a statement of the kind of experience it wants to be known for.
Tickets and partnership: how to attend or get involved
The evening takes place on 28 October 2026 at the National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE — in the heart of Whitehall, a short walk from Embankment and Westminster Underground stations and close to Parliament and Trafalgar Square. As a private members' club, the National Liberal Club opens its ticketed cultural evenings to non-members through the organiser, and a start time and ticket price for Rescuing Chopin in London are expected to be confirmed by the Business Social Club ahead of the date.
Seating in the club's function rooms is finite, so evenings of this kind usually run on advance booking rather than door sales; prospective guests are better placed reserving once tickets are released than arriving on the night. The organisers are separately inviting institutional, business and media partners to get in touch, and say press images and interview access with the performers can be supplied on request — useful to editors and to sponsors weighing involvement.
With a documented true story at its centre, a landmark venue and proceeds directed to a homelessness charity, the evening is being presented as a celebration of culture, heritage and the enduring friendship between Poland and the United Kingdom.
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