Nightowl my skepticism is that all of the discussion of the discovery is in the lay press. I would have expected that for something like this, the discovery would be published in a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal. Perhaps the New York Times might ‘scoop’ the story, but if the discovery is under review at a prestigious journal, I would have expected this to be worth a sentence in the NYTimes report. I’m surprised that there’s nothing like this, although my experience with academic work is in an unrelated field.
With regard to the piece itself, it sounds to me to be incomplete. I’m not a true musical scholar, let alone a scholar of Chopin, so my opinion is worth very little. It’s definitely a cool story, and it would actually be wonderful if they could unearth additional details about it. I hope that there’s no cold water shed on it over time, but for the moment, I will hold my breath and hope for some additional information.