One Way Ticket

Donald Macleod enters the Parisian world of Frederic Chopin. Today, the young composer tries to get himself noticed on the exclusive salon circuit.

He was the poet of the piano, the master of the exquisite miniature, one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of the Romantic era, a magician at the keyboard... This week, Donald Macleod follows Frederic Chopin’s years in Paris, the epicentre of culture at the time and the stage where most of his all-too-short life was acted out. In the years that Chopin lived there, the 1830s and ’40s, Paris suffered political turmoil and deadly epidemics, whilst drawing artists, writers and musicians from all over the world. Following Chopin’s many house moves, we hear how the young composer made his name among the city’s most prestigious salons, established himself as the go-to teacher in town, and rubbed shoulders with fellow creatives, including a long and stormy relationship with the novelist George Sand.

Today, the wunderkind from Warsaw arrives at his new Parisian address “with little more than a ducat in my pocket”. An anticlimactic meeting with his hero inspires him to forge his own path, and we hear his mixed first impressions of the city as he tries to make his own impression on the exclusive salon circuit.

12 Etudes, Op 10 No 12 in C minor “the Revolutionary”
Murray Perahia, piano

Nocturne No 4 in F major, Op 15 No 1
Elizabeth Leonskaja, piano

Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor (ii. Romance)
Krystian Zimerman, piano
Polish Festival Orchestra

Ballade No 4 in F minor, Op 52
Maurizio Pollini, piano

Piano Concerto No 2 in F minor (iii. Allegro vivace)
Fumiko Shiraga, piano
Yggdrasil String Quartet
Jan-Inge Haukås, double bass

Grande Valse Brillante in E flat, Op 18
Stephen Hough, piano

Produced by Amelia Parker for BBC Audio Wales and West