All language subtitles for BBC - Chopin.The Women Behind the Music

GENTLE MELODIC MUSIC

This is the unmistakeable sound
of Frederic Chopin.

A shy and private man,

his music speaks of raw emotion

and his sublime compositions for
the piano inspire profound passion
in both players and listeners.

Chopin wrote over 250 compositions
for the piano

and drew from the instrument
an intense singing quality.

The inspiration for his music
was not only the keyboard,

but also the human voice,
in particular, the female voice.

As we celebrate
Chopin's 200th anniversary,

we follow a young pianist
as he sets out to discover
who put the song into Chopin.

Do I identify with Chopin as a man?

On some level,
yeah, of course I do.

It seems like the most arrogant
thing in the world to say that
I identify with Chopin as a man,

but if I look at the emotions
within him, then hell, yeah.

I mean, the kind of malaise
that he had,

the awkwardness.

James Rhodes studied the piano
as a teenager,
but never went to music college.

He went to work in the City, but
in his late 20s, he couldn't resist
his desire to play any longer.

Now 34, he's a full-time concert
pianist with a recording contract

and with a youthful
and growing following.

I'm obsessed with music.

I live for the piano.

I am not entirely comfortable
with people or in the outside world.

The only big difference I would say

is that I have maybe a thousandth
of the genius that he actually had.

Chopin's genius was to create
a whole new language for the piano,

a language that was
heavily influenced by his passion
for singing, opera singing.

Chopin was obsessed
with the popular,

vocally athletic Italian opera
of the day known as "bel canto",

the opera of Bellini, Donizetti
and Rossini.

Now, bel canto,
literally "beautiful singing",

the bel canto ethos,
as you might say...

..was obviously nourished
and to a certain extent formed by
what he heard as a child in Warsaw.

But I think it was so much a part
of his whole aesthetic background

that had he not heard it,
he would have invented it.

SINGS ARIA IN ITALIAN

To Chopin, the voice was
the ultimate musical instrument.

It was the ultimate art form.

And he was, I think, fascinated
by any woman who could really sing.

Who were these singers
that were so important to Chopin?

What influence
did they have on his music?

As a Chopin-besotted pianist, James
is keen to answer these questions

and has enlisted the help
of rising star, 23-year-old
Welsh opera singer, Natalya Romaniw.

OK. Right, come on.
All right. OK. Are you ready?

SHE SINGS MELODY

Wow! That's really got a lot
of legato line in it for the voice.

It's operatic, isn't it? Yeah.

James is undertaking a journey
which he hopes will help him
to discover the real women

whose voices can still be heard
inside Chopin's music.

The journey begins in Warsaw,

the city where Chopin grew up,
the city he always thought of
as home

and which is now celebrating
his 200th anniversary as
the nation's great cultural hero.

Chopin was born in 1810
and grew up in Warsaw

where his father was a teacher
at a time when Poland was peaceful

and the city was enjoying
a cultural renaissance.

This was an era when piano makers,
encouraged by composers
like Beethoven,

were rapidly modernising the piano,

transforming it
into a stronger, more resonant

and increasingly popular
and affordable instrument
for the educated classes.

In this environment, it was
no surprise that Chopin was taught
by his mother to play the piano.

What was extraordinary was that
by the age of seven, he was already
composing on the instrument,

and by the age of eight,
he was being feted in the press
as a musical genius.

Zofia Chechlinska is
a leading academic
from Warsaw's Chopin Institute

and an expert
on Chopin's early life.

He was surrounded by music.

He was quite young.
He was 10, 11, 12

when he started to go to the opera.

He loved opera. There are
many evidences that he loved opera.
And he loved singing.

There was contact
with Angelica Catalani
who performed here in Warsaw.

Angelica Catalani, one of the great
divas of the early 19th century,

had an astonishing voice
famed for its power and range.

Chopin met her
in one of the Warsaw salons

where he performed.

She said that he was wonderful
and then she gave him a watch.

It is in Chopin's Museum here
with the caption,

"To Frederic Chopin,
10 years old, pianist."

Fantastic. Yes, yes.

Chopin's father Mikolaj taught
in the main academy
for the gentry in Warsaw,

a post that provided his son
with access to the city's educated
and aristocratic society,

a world in which the opera house
played a pivotal role.

Marita Alban Juarez,
an expert on Chopin's Warsaw,

took James to visit
the reconstructed apartment
where he lived with his parents.

The living room. Wow!

So this is exactly where he was...
he spent his teenage years.

Because at 17, he was writing
his piano concertos already. Yes.

The 2nd Piano Concerto he wrote.

You know, in this room
they had the first rehearsal
for the piano concerto.

Really? And of course, his piano.

Yes, look, this is the 2nd Concerto.
The slow movement.
Yes, this is the concerto.

And this is
Chopin's handwriting here.

Until the last moment,
he was correcting everything.

Yeah, amazing.
Every note he thought about.

I'm getting shivers just thinking
this is the room it was done in.
This is the room. Incredible.

God, it's an amazing view!

This is the gate of the university.

Right opposite?
Yes, it was the university campus.

This is amazing.
I can't believe Chopin himself
would have looked out over here

to see his friends coming over.
"Come on!" Yes.

And look at the girls
coming out of the university.

At least one movement from one
of the concertos that Chopin wrote
and played in this apartment

was inspired by a girl he might
well have watched from this window.

He wrote in a letter to a friend...

"Because, perhaps to my misery,
I already have my perfect one

"whom I have, without saying a word,
served faithfully for a year now,

"of whom I dream
and in whose memory the adagio
of my concerto has been written."

The girl he was writing about
was Konstancja Gladkowska.

She was 19, the same age as Chopin,

and an opera singer
at the Warsaw Conservatoire.

She sang at the first concert
Chopin gave, public concert.

He said that was beautiful.

Also when Chopin
was already leaving Warsaw,

she wrote that, "You go abroad,
you will be famous,

"you will be well-known,
you will make a career.

"But nobody will love you
as we love you here."

He was sometimes working
as an accompanist also.

It happened, of course,
in the conservatoire.

Is that how he met Konstancja?

Yes, he met Konstancja
during a recital.

He fell in love and, you know...

It was a very, very sad moment
for him because I think
Konstancja didn't love him.

OK. He wasn't...

He wasn't happy in his romances.

Yeah. No musicians are happy
in their romances, I don't think.

Much of the music that Chopin heard
Konstancja sing was by Rossini.

Natalya Romaniw has recently
performed in a Rossini opera
called La Scala Di Seta

about a girl who marries in secret

and whose husband visits her
at night with the help of a "scala
di seta" - a ladder of silk.

We'll just play around with it.
This is what Chopin would have heard

when he went to the opera or hanging
out with his singer friends? Yeah.

So I'll come in
at the start of the bar.

HE PLAYS INTRO

That's too slow? Yeah.
SHE SINGS RHYTHM

OK...
PLAYS MORE UP-TEMPO

# Quanto pena un' alma amante

# Quanto costa in vero amar

# Quanto pena un' alma amante

# Quanto costa un vero amar

# Confusa incerta
mi sento vacillar

# Vacillar

# Confusa incerta
mi sento vacillar

# Vacillar

# Va-ci-la-a-a
Vacillar-lar, vacillar! #

THEY BOTH LAUGH
So much fun.

I love the piece.
It's like two pages of an ending.
It's just one massive ending.

The chords are quite basic, but...
Yeah, exactly.

PLAYS PIECE AGAIN

I can really see how...

You imagine in Warsaw or in Paris,
a young Chopin with a beautiful
singer with an amazing voice,

sitting, just the two of them,
with the candle on, singing
the most beautiful Italian arias.

It's incredibly intimate. Yeah.

I think his love of bel canto
sprung actually more
from his love of the voice,

the capability of the voice
and the immediacy of the voice.

The voice, after all, is not only
the most faithful and immediate
servant of our musical impulse.

The voice is the means by which
we express throughout our lives
almost all of our inner life.

James's trip to Warsaw
coincided with
the Chopin International Festival

and he met up with one of the great
Chopin pianists, Garrick Ohlsson,

to discover how he feels
bel canto opera fed into
the young composer's music.

Italian opera was the rage
in Warsaw, as it was all over Europe.

And he had this... He was imbued
with this bel canto idea
right from the very start,

his earliest pieces, that he had
the idea of the melody and how to
accompany it and how to configure it.

I think it was present
from the start. It was part of his
musical blood and musical essence.

Is there anything you do
to get that singing tone?

On the piano, the problem is all
you have for a pianist to do is...
PLAYS NOTE

You have the attack, whatever
that is. Then the piano does...

PLAYS LONG NOTE
..that. The only thing
you can control is the release.

You have several complex mechanisms.

You've got a pedal which will release
greater combinations of overtones,

but if you want to take
a great singing Nocturne,
such as the D Flat Opus 27, No.2,

if you play it without anything
except just the pedal and the tune...

HE PLAYS PIECE

It's very pretty,
but it's naked. Yeah.

But Chopin's piano was developing
at the time,

so, because of the possibility
of gathering sounds on the pedal,

he took this figure and spread it
over more than two octaves.

Which already sets up
an aura of sound. Absolutely.

An envelope.
A beautiful cushion, a texture.

And of course, incredibly clever, he
was more than clever, a true genius,

he understood even how to emphasise
certain notes within the texture.

HE PLAYS PIECE

We've had this... We've had plenty
of the D Flat which is the bass.

But we've had
a disproportionate amount of this F,

which is one octave below the note
where the tune starts.

So when you...
PLAYS PIECE

The ear is already...

That F becomes a manifestation
of the harmony, but suddenly,
it's made glamorous.

It's clothed and the overtones...
It's up there above everything else.

It's like the singer
joining the music.

So, in that way, yes, he did capture
the bel canto kind of melody.

Very early on,

once his talent became apparent,

he was anointed to become
the Polish national opera composer.

So, not only opera was the place
to go and the place to be seen,

not only was it the place
where you could learn a lot
as a musician, as a pianist,

but it was also the place
where he was to hone his skills
for the future

as the great Polish composer,
opera composer.

But Chopin wasn't ready
to write an opera.

On the 2nd of November, 1830,

at the age of 20,
he left Warsaw for Vienna

on an educational expedition.

He had no idea that he was never
to return home again.

Four weeks later,
Poland exploded into
a brief, bloody and doomed revolt

against Russian rule

and Chopin's study tour
was transformed into exile.

Throughout his life, Chopin
retained strong links with Warsaw,

but he never felt able to return.

Instead,
he filled his music with Poland,

particularly in his Polonaises,
his short, intimate mazurkas,

and this,
his stirring Revolutionary Study.

DRAMATIC PIANO MUSIC

Once he had reached Vienna,

revolution broke out
in Poland in Warsaw,

so he was stuck there.

His travelling companion,
Titus, his best friend,

went back to Poland
to fight against the Russians.

And Chopin sat around in Vienna,
not really knowing what to do.

Italy was a bit of a no-go area
because there were revolutions
breaking out there.

Finally,
he decided to travel to Paris

which, although there had been
a revolution there in 1830,
had quietened down a bit.

On the second leg of his journey,
James is taking the train to Paris

to explore the world in which the
young Polish musician found himself.

Chopin shied away
from offering any literal
interpretations of his music.

He gave little or no information
in the titles of his work

and yet many of his compositions
seem imbued with a deep sense
of loss and longing,

sentiments often attributed
to a lifelong homesickness.

Homesick or not, when Chopin
arrived in Paris aged 21,
he was filled with excitement.

He took rooms
in the heart of the city

and wrote letters home describing
the wealth, the filth,

the noise and the restaurant prices.

"You can eat the most hearty dinner
for 32 sous

"in a restaurant with mirrors,
gilding and gas lighting,

"and the next, you can eat lunch

"where they will give you
just enough for a bird to eat
and charge three times as much."

If Chopin's passion for Konstancja
in Warsaw had been all in the mind,

clearly by the time he arrived
in Paris, he was no longer
quite so sexually innocent.

An encounter with a girl called
Theresa in Austria had left him
with some unpleasant side-effects.

He wrote to one of his friends
back in Poland...

"The memory of Theresa forbids me
to taste forbidden fruit,

"but I already know
several lady vocalists

"and lady vocalists here
are even more anxious for duets
than those in the Tyrol."

But what really excited
the young composer
about being in Paris was the opera

and the opportunity to hear
the world's greatest singers.

Paris in the 1830s and 1840s was
the cultural capital
of the western world.

This had various implications
for Chopin.

For one thing, he could hear
the best orchestras in the world
which were based there.

Some of the best musicians
were based there,

but also he could hear all those
who were bound to come through Paris.

When he arrived, he wrote,
"She is here, he sings there.

"She... I've heard her singing

"and all at the same place at
the same moment, at the same time."

It was really a paradise for him
to be in Paris at this time.

There's the premiere at The Opera
of Meyerbeer's Robert Le Diable,

which is an opera
that is almost forgotten now.

In the 19th century, it was
the most performed opera of any work.

The main singer
that he liked in Robert
was the soprano Cinti-Damoreau.

And he was incredibly taken
with her voice.

She was famous for being able
to sing chromatic scales as if
she were playing them on the piano.

And at a time when it's clear
that lots of singers, even some
of the most renowned singers,

were not always particularly precise,

people loved the fact,
Chopin included loved the fact

that her performance sounded
almost like an instrument playing.

It's not that he discovered opera
in Paris, but he discovered
the best singers.

He discovered the best pieces
because he could hear Rossini,
Bellini "e tutti quanti".

Really, he could have an access,
a direct access

to the core of the inspiration
of his own music.

The big question is,
why didn't Chopin, the brilliant
young composer, write for the opera,

an art form that he clearly adored?

It's very clear
that little by little, he recognises
that the circumstances have changed.

First of all, the fall
of the November uprising meant

that even in Poland, national opera
could not be performed.

The fact that he did settle in Paris
and did not return to Poland meant

that he would be writing
a Polish language opera in France...

..which was meaningless and futile.

But perhaps also his inclination,
his natural inclination
towards the piano.

This was the medium
he was the most comfortable in.

So...I think in some way what he did

is he channelled opera-like
narratives into his larger works.

They become miniature operas.

When Chopin arrived in Paris
aged 21,

he had already composed
a substantial body
of extraordinary music.

Within a year,
he was a fashionable celebrity,

not just for his composition,
but also for his mesmerising and
uniquely delicate style of playing.

It was a wonderful atmosphere
because Chopin played

and some say he played at midnight,
for instance, the Nocturnes.

Can you imagine the Nocturnes
at midnight?

It was an enchantment.
Really, it was an enchantment
because it was private.

The music was for yourself and the
people in the salon were very happy.

They were very confident
in being the only ones to hear,
it was a privilege.

PLAYS LIVELY, DRAMATIC PIECE

The poet Theophile Gautier wrote...

"Chopin stands for
a melancholic elegance.

"A dreamy charm.

"A female sensitivity.

"Touched with his fingers,
the keys seem to be brushed
by an angel's wing."

Thank you.

Instead of writing
for the opera house,
Chopin's theatre was the salon,

the intimate, sophisticated world
in which the aristocracy and the
artistic community intermingled.

It was for this audience that
throughout the 1830s and '40s

he produced a prolific range
of concise, poetic piano music.

Mazurkas, waltzes, atmospheric
nocturnes and electrifying studies.

Occasionally, he also found time
to compose songs,

usually as gifts for society ladies.

One of these ladies
was a young Polish countess.

# Moja pieszczotka

# Gdy w wesolej chwili

# Pocznie szczebiotac
i kwilic i gruchac... #

Her name was Delfina Potocka.

She was not only Polish,

she was beautiful, wealthy
and clearly a wonderful singer.

She was one of the very first
of Chopin's Parisian friends

and remained close to him right up
to his death.

This lake at Enghien
a few miles north of Paris,

has often been associated with
a possible romance between them.

# Nie smiem przerywac

# Nie smiem, nie smiem odpowiadac

# I tylko chcialbym sluchac!

# I tylko chcialbym sluchac! #

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:
During that period,

she was leading
a very liberated lifestyle.

Separated from her husband,

and having scandalous affairs
with famous people.

The nature of the relationship
between Chopin and Potocka

has been the source of endless
speculation and gossip.

One of the most intriguing rumours
is that during the summer of 1836,

Chopin stayed in a villa that
Delfina had rented by this lake.

A year later, Chopin was passing
Enghien with a Polish friend,

who described in his diary how
Chopin had "turned my attention

"to the wide lake and on its edge,

"the little villa in which he had
spent the previous summer.

"His face became suffused with the
pleasantness of the memory.

"It must have been a very happy
period of his life."

The story was revived again
as recently as the 1940s,

when a mysterious bundle
of semi-pornographic letters,

alleged correspondence between
Chopin and Potocka,

was discovered by one
of Potocka's descendants.

The letters horrified scholars,

mostly because of what was seen as
the un-Chopin-like bedroom language.

The letters were dismissed as
forgeries, but then tragically,

the relative committed suicide,

and the letters disappeared.

However, the debate about their
authenticity still rumbles on.

# Calowac, calowac, calowac... #

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:
What interests me about
the relationship between Chopin

and Delfina is not the possibility
of a love affair between them.

In my opinion, it's quite likely
that it never happened.

On the contrary, what I'm much more
interested to know

is that she put words on one
of the last nocturnes of Chopin,

which she played in front of him
and which he found,

and I quote his words "ca se chantait
bien", it sang itself well.

I think that the fact they shared
the same musical ideas

is so much more interesting
than the love affair.

Marie-Paule Rambeau's reluctance
to accept the idea

of a Chopin-Potocka love affair is
based on a simple lack of evidence.

The shortage of information about
this or other parts

of Chopin's romantic life

has generated a long-running debate
about his sexuality.

How can a man who wrote such
passionate music have had

such an apparently limited life?

We'll never know
whether he slept with Delfina

or any of the other singers
in his life.

but there's no doubting the
attraction they had for him.

Much is made of the importance
to Chopin of singers in his life.

Relatively few of the singers
that he mentions and admires are men.

The vast bulk of them are women.

And I think there was something
about the woman's voice

and also the woman's singing

as a means of Chopin
being able to approach that woman.

Because Chopin
was basically quite shy.

In fact, he was basically VERY shy.

And I think in a strange way, women
singing...

Can I be so coarse as to say...
turned him on?

The best evidence of Chopin's
friendship with Delfina Potocka

lies in the music
which he dedicated to her.

Including his great
F minor piano concerto.

The slow movement may have been
inspired by Constance back

in Warsaw, but when the concerto
was eventually published in Paris,

It was Delfina's name that graced
the finished work's cover.

Because of his reputation
in the salons,

Chopin was in great demand
as a piano teacher.

And this became
his principal source of income.

In Paris, it was...

Music had become the ultimate...
form of art

for not just the moneyed rich,

at the head of whom stood the great
bankers such as the Rothschilds,

but also the highest aristocracy,

who all sent their daughters
for lessons to Chopin

at unimaginable prices.

He seems to have made very good money
from that. And good enough money

that after a year or so
of teaching piano,

he could start teaching piano
in his own apartments,

once he'd moved to the
rue de la Chaussee d'Antin,

which was one of the most fashionable
roads to be on in Paris at the time.

Chopin seldom talked about
the composition of his music.

But there are many
highly revealing accounts

of his approach to playing
and teaching the piano.

Yes, Chopin did encourage his pupils
to sing with the fingers.

He introduced a new kind
of technique,

in which the fingers were not
surrogate hammers,

but in which the hand and the arm

and the elbow and everything came
into play as a kind of choreography.

A choreography of the entire arm.

He treated the hand as a cast of
characters, just as he treated

the scale as a cast of characters.

And his favourite singing finger
was the third - this long finger.

And how did that sing best?

Because he used it as the centre

of a kind of stroking mechanism.

And with Chopin, I've adapted this
into my own teaching,

I liken it to the stroking
of a lion's mane.

He did not come down from it above,
he didn't go...

He kept saying in his teaching all
the time, "Facilement, facilement!"

"Easily, easily!" Well, he wrote...

His etudes are simply about as
difficult as music gets.

They are unbelievably difficult.

And his motto was
"souplesse avant tout" -

"suppleness before everything".

And one astounding thing about these
incredibly difficult Chopin etudes

is that the testimony of his pupils
repeatedly says that he made it easy,

that what they had thought
was insurmountably challenging,

became natural and easy.

Now this is really something. I would
love to have had lessons with him.

Who wouldn't?

In 1836, six years after
arriving in Paris,

Chopin met a female novelist
called George Sand.

Sand, at 33, was six years older
than him.

A famous bohemian,
a political radical,

she often dressed in men's clothes
and most notoriously,

smoked cigars in public.

Sand fell passionately in love
with Chopin and gradually,

over the next two years,
he was seduced.

The most bewildering
of the relationships

and the dominant relationship
of Chopin's life

was his relationship with
the unbelievably scandalous,

highly sexed, extravagant,
megalomaniacal George Sand.

To avoid the gossip
that their relationship

was beginning to attract, they
decided to spend the winter of 1838

together on the then remote
island of Majorca,

accompanied by Sand's
two young children.

That winter on Majorca,
the 28-year-old Chopin

became seriously ill and
was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

From this point on,
his life was dominated
by the progression of the disease.

Because of the locals' fear
of being infected by him,

Chopin, Sand and the children were
forced to leave the house they were
renting and they ended up in rooms

in a deserted monastery
at Valldemossa.

Chopin wrote to a friend with
his typically waspish humour,

"I have been as sick as a dog
these last two weeks.

"I caught cold in spite of 18
degrees of heat,

"roses, oranges, palms, figs

"and three of the most famous
doctors on the island.

"One sniffed at what I spat up.

"A second tapped where I spat from.

"The third poked about and listened
to how I spat it.

"One said that I had died,
the second that I am dying

"the third that I shall die."

Despite his illness,
during his time on Majorca,

Chopin completed one of his greatest
collections of work -

the Preludes.

24 short poetic masterpieces
for piano.

Eventually, Chopin had to be taken
off the island

and after a long period of recovery
in Marseilles,

they arrived at Nohant in June 1839,

Sand's family home
in the heart of rural France.

Chopin and Sand spent
the next eight years together

and the long summers at Nohant
gave the frail Chopin

a suitably quiet and restorative
atmosphere in which to compose.

She created conditions for him
to work in, to be happy in.

It's difficult to know who else
could have given him

that kind of stability and
that kind of security other than her.

It was at Nohant that Chopin
formed a close musical friendship

with a protegee of Sand's -

a young singer and composer
called Pauline Viardot.

He loved Pauline being there.
He always said that she had

such joie de vivre, such elan,

that when she was around, however
depressed or lacking in inspiration

he might have been, she could
always renew his creative spirit.

She just seemed that sort of person.
She would walk into a room

and suddenly you'd feel a light
had been turned on.

He felt that she was a really kindred
spirit. That right from the word go,

they understood each other musically.

One of the most rewarding aspects
of their friendship

was the way they fed one another's
musical composition.

This song is a setting
of one of Chopin's mazurkas,
his short Polish-style pieces.

Arranged and set to words
by Pauline.

# Ah, soudain la nuit s'acheve

# Et s'enfuit l'espoir

# A-a-a-a-h

# Helas

# Helas

# A-a-a-a-h

# Chere ame, sans toi j'expire

# Pourquois taire ma doleur?

# Mes levres veulent sourire

# Mes yeux dises mon malheur

# Helas! Loin de toi j'expire

# Pourquoi taire ma doleur?

# Mes levres veulent

# Helas! La mort

# La mort est dans mon coeur. #

It must have been fun for them
to collaborate. Oh, yes.

She used to, at first, with a bit
of trepidation, show him
what she was composing.

And she wrote to George Sand, saying
saying she'd written a song called

le Roseau Et Le Chene

and she wanted to show it to Chopin
but she was a bit afraid in case
he didn't think it was good enough.

Well, he obviously did, because
he played it for her in 1842.

# Le chene, un jour, dit au roseau

# Vous avez bien sujet
d'accuser la nature... #

At the National Library of France,

Nicolas Dufatel was keen to show
James some graphic evidence

of this collaboration
between Chopin and Viardot.

They sang at a concert
in the Salon Pleyel a melody
by Pauline Viardot,

Le Chene Et Le Roseau.

There is a manuscript here
in the Bibliotheque Nationale

with Chopin's corrections.

So he helped her for the composition
and for the interpretation.

Do you want to see? I'd love to see.

And it has his writing on it?
Yes. With a pencil.

So I can't touch it, obviously.
Sorry.

This is Le Chene Et Le Roseau.

This manuscript could be the one
used for the concert

so it was in Chopin's hands.
You see his own writing.

So you see the handwriting, very...
because it has to be used.

And Chopin is quite shaky because it
was certainly written on the piano.

So you can imagine Pauline Viardot
standing up... I do the same thing,

I write on the piano, how to play.
Chopin is the same, of course.

During the long summers at Nohant
Chopin composed not just
exquisite miniatures

but longer scale works -

his fantasies, ballads,
the famous B-flat-minor sonata.

One of the last works
to be completed there

was the challenging, dreamlike
Polonaise-Fantaisie.

Much of Chopin's composition was
born out of his extraordinary powers
of improvisation

which never failed to dazzle
an audience.

A guest at George Sand's salon
commented,

"The other day
I heard Chopin improvise.

"It is marvellous to hear him
compose in this way.

"His inspiration is so immediate
and complete

"that he plays without hesitation,
as though it had to be thus."

"But when it comes to writing it
down and recapturing the original
thought in all its details,

"he spends days of nervous strain
and almost frightening desperation.

"He alters and retouches
the same phrases incessantly

"and walks up and down
like a madman."

Chopin and George Sand
lived side by side for eight years

both at Nohant and at apartments
here at the Square d'Orleans.

But in 1847 their by now uneasy
relationship collapsed in bitterness

when Chopin sided with
Sand's daughter in a family row.

In June 1848, the year after
his separation from Sand,

alone, short of money
and in deteriorating health,

things got even worse for Chopin
when Paris descended into chaos.

Troops fired on a demonstrating
crowd, sparking a new revolution.

The French King Louis Philippe
was overthrown

and when he fled to England,
the French aristocracy
followed swiftly behind

fearing another reign of terror.

Chopin had no choice but to follow
his clients to London.

London was where he met the last
of the great singers in his life.

Her name was Jenny Lind,

one of the most famous divas
of the 19th century.

Lind was born in the backstreets
of Stockholm,

a devout Protestant,
disciplined and driven,

who went on to conquer the European
opera stage whilst still a teenager

and then triumph on a grand tour
of America organised by PT Barnum,

where she was seen
by over a million people

and paid today's equivalent
of more than $5 million.

By the time they met, Chopin had
all but finished composing.

But his friendship with Lind
reveals the effect a great voice
could still have on the composer.

James and Natalya travel to Brussels
to meet a Scandinavian couple,

Cecilia and Jens Jorgensen.

The Jorgensens have spent
the last seven years

exploring the relationship
between Chopin and Lind.

They both had careers in business

but since retiring have been
caught up like so many before them

in the mysteries and uncertainty
surrounding Chopin's life.

Cecilia became intrigued when
she read of Chopin's encounter
with her fellow Swede Jenny Lind.

Since then, she and Jens
have been working as
researcher-cum-detectives,

trying to uncover what happened
between these two great musicians.

There's a lot of mystery
around Chopin, isn't there?
Almost a mythical quality.

You are a bit like Chopin,
do you know that?

He writes...
He's got a lot of humour

and he's very good at observing
situations... Extremely
good looking(!)

I was going to add that point.
I should cough more.

SVEN: It's a good start.

What fascinates me is, we're
talking about the last few months
of his life.

What was it that got you to sit up
and think,

"Wow! There's something
really new here, something
really intriguing"?

And you spent, what,
eight years now?

Today nobody else has ever spoken
about Chopin generally

and no other scholars,
so it's new information.

There is clear evidence, of course,
that Chopin and Jenny Lind

had a very special relationship

that went far beyond
mere acquaintance.

OK.

We can hear from his letters
that they had a close relationship.

There is a letter from Jenny Lind
to a friend from 9th November 1849,

that's nine days after his funeral,

and in that she talks about
her loss of Chopin

and that she feels numb
by this loss.

After his death, she wrote music
to his mazurkas.

SVEN: Her own arrangement.
For voice and piano.
For voice and piano.

And it's Faithful Love
Will Never Die.

So how did
the ailing Polish composer
and this young Swedish singer meet?

In April 1848
Chopin arrived in London

where he took an apartment
in fashionable Mayfair,

probably paid for with the help of
wealthy British patrons.

There was a glut of musicians who
poured over from the Continent
in 1848

largely to escape the violence
and the infighting

that was going on in Paris,
particularly.

So you get pianists such as Talberg,
Kalkbrenner, Chopin, obviously,

Berlioz comes over as well,

he sees this as a place
that offers him refuge.

SVEN: This is 48 Dover Street,
where Chopin stayed...

shortly after his arrival.

We know that he came here about
a week after his arrival in London

and we know that from
the piano firm Broadwood,

from their records, that they
delivered a piano on that day,

the 27th April,
it's quite interesting.

So it was up there somewhere. Well,
probably the modern building.

Chopin writes that,
"I finally have a room in which
I can breathe and play."

At the point at which Chopin came
to London and tried to establish
himself in 1848,

he was a very sick man.

He certainly was by the end of
several months of trekking round
London society,

being introduced to the 'ton',
the fashionable crowds.

Probably the most prestigious
appearance that Chopin made
whilst in London

was his presentation to
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

at Stafford House.

This was at a gathering hosted by
the Duchess of Sutherland

and Stafford House was
a very, very beautiful - still is -
it's now known as Lancaster House.

A very, very beautiful setting
for a concert, a stone's throw
from St James's Palace

and Chopin was presented to the Queen
and the Prince Consort.

His sense was that he was
politely welcomed.

By 1848 Jenny Lind was London's
most celebrated singer.

She was earning huge fees
and her performances were
the hottest ticket in town.

Fascinating, this whole phenomenon
of Lindmania

and how quickly the merchandising
and the marketing started.

She was on
the cover of chocolate boxes,
there was a tulip named after her,

there was a pub in Hastings called
the Jenny Lind, which she would not
have approved of.

I'm sure she didn't approve
of public houses.

Queen Victoria loved the opera
and she loved prima donnas,
she loved singers.

Perhaps most significantly,
Jenny Lind.

So when Jenny Lind
finally came to London

and took up an engagement
at Her Majesty's Theatre,

she was captivated
and I think she attended

every single one of Jenny Lind's
performances that season.

On May 11th 1848,

Chopin heard Jenny Lind sing
for the first time
at Her Majesty's Theatre

in a performance of Bellini's opera
La Sonnambula.

Ed Gardner, Music Director
of English National Opera,

is working with Natalya on the most
famous number from Sonnambula,

an aria indelibly associated with
Jenny Lind and her distinctive
style of singing.

Where does it come in the piece
and what is the character feeling
when she comes to sing it?

It comes quite near the end
and she's sleepwalking,

so she's being quite honest,
I would imagine.

She doesn't know that
anyone's listening to her.

So it's private, in a way.
Very intimate.

That private, that kind of
chambery colour, I guess,

is something which I think is
a real fingerprint of the piece

and something I think Chopin said
about Jenny Lind's singing,

that it has a sort of finesse
in its piano about it. Yes.

An evenness but a finesse as well.

Amina in La Sonnambula by Bellini
was probably her most famous role.

La Sonnambula, The Sleepwalker.

It just sort of fitted
her personality
in the most wonderful way.

It's about a very pure village girl
in Switzerland

who is thought to have been seen
in a gentleman's bedroom.

And her honour is impugned
and scandal threatens.

SHE SINGS IN ITALIAN

You sing it beautifully.

It turns out
that she's a sleepwalker

and, em, everybody's very relieved

that, in fact, she turns out to be,
em, absolutely the unsullied virgin

and of course, this fitted the whole
Jenny Lind mythology to a tee

apart from the fact that
I think the music obviously
suited her beautifully.

Why does he write these breaks
after, "Si presto estinto?"

What are those rests for?

Em...

Emotion. Yeah. That's it, because
you can't carry the phrase on.

No, yeah. We need to hear them.

It can't feel too comfortable
in the way that you sing it.
Shall we try it again? Yes.

HE PLAYS PIANO

SHE SINGS IN ITALIAN

'It was one of those voices
like Maria Callas's,

'which was instantly recognisable.

'Of course,
there are no recordings of it,'

so we don't actually know
what it sounded like,

but Chopin said it reminded him
of the northern lights

and other people said
that it reminded them of
the smell of pine trees.

There was something very, very...
fresh, something very, very cool,

something very, very pure about it.

SHE SINGS IN ITALIAN

In a letter back to Warsaw, Chopin
was unusually effusive about Lind.

"She is enormously effective
in Sonnambula.

"She sings with extreme purity
and conviction

"and her piano notes are steady
and even as a hair."

The night after Chopin
heard Jenny singing La Sonnambula,

he was invited to a small supper
party with her

at the Belgravia home of their
mutual friend, a Mrs Grote.

So what happened
in Mrs Grote's house that evening?

LAUGHTER
A very leading question!

But what we know
is that they played together,

they were sitting at the piano,
both of them,

from 9.00 till 1.00 in the night.
That's four hours.

We know that Mrs Grote
arranged for Chopin, she invited him

to a dinner and when he got there,

the only other guest was Jenny Lind.

You think she was
playing a matchmaker?

Yeah and I think Jenny Lind must
have expressed a wish to see him.

She's not a matchmaker, but it is
to make these two great musical
personalities to meet

because clearly Chopin was impressed
by Jenny Lind's performance.

Do we know what they played or...?

No, we can only...
She usually played "Swedish things"
as he talks about it

because they do meet soon after
again, where he says, "She played me
Swedish things till midnight."

SHE SINGS

'Chopin alludes to the fact
that she had taken, as it were,

'the music of Scandinavia,
the melodies of her country,

'and translated them
into something else.'

He thought he perceived in her,

something very akin
to what he was doing

and it was an extraordinary
musical experience for him,

'which was saying quite a lot because
not much was exciting him by then.

'He was pretty jaded,
pretty depressed,

'so the fact that Jenny Lind
made such an impression

'says a lot about...about her
and how he understood her.'

SHE CONTINUES TO SING

The Jorgensens' research
has led them to develop a new theory

that Chopin and Lind had some kind
of romance in the summer of 1848.

Although Jenny was
on tour around Britain
and Chopin was mostly in Scotland,

the Jorgensens are convinced
that their letters reveal clues
of powerful emotions.

"Miss Lind came to my concert!

"She never sings anywhere but in
the opera, but she would have sung
for me according to Mrs Grote...

"Jenny Lind and Mrs Grote, who I met
at the station, have been here
and have gone on to Glasgow...

"If I were younger,
if I were not prostrate
under my affections as I am,

"I might be able to
start life again."

Chopin writes already
in June in London,

"I prostrate under my feelings,
I wish I was younger."

Now...that...is open for
a very clear interpretation
of what he's talking about there,

so, er, the romance started...already
in London, clearly,

and continued - there were
all sorts of opportunities.

There is no hard evidence of
a Chopin-Lind romance,

but it's not difficult to understand
why there might be speculation.

Clearly her voice made
a huge impression on Chopin.

In November 1848,
despite very poor health,

Chopin played at a grand Polish ball
at London's Guildhall.

He played at the concert on
the way back from, em, Scotland.

He was very ill. He'd caught a chill
on the way back to London.

Em, and he was effectively
providing music from an anteroom.

He played for about an hour, em,
his usual short characteristic pieces

and nobody really paid him
any attention

and certainly we don't get
comment in the press.

You'd have thought that

such an event would have been
a great platform for him,

that he would have been
a great centrepiece,

his performance would have been
a great centrepiece at this event,

but unfortunately,
it almost passed without notice

and he left, returned to Paris,

and that was
his last public performance.

Although this last performance
may have been a dismal event,

Chopin's final years as a composer

produced some of
his most powerful work,

some of the great masterpieces
of the piano repertoire,

including a work about which
James is passionate -

the fourth Ballade.

There are plenty of
wonderful moments here.

Looking at the Ballade with his
Italian teacher Eduardo Strabioli,

James is exploring how to bring out
the bel canto line within the piece.

HE PLAYS THE PIANO

Yeah, but I felt that you cut a
couple of times with the long line...

Yeah. ..which I don't think we need.

I mean, because the bel canto is to
be easy to follow and somehow this...

Of course I know that is important
to notice, but not to stop the line.

The upper line has to...

'The whole concept of the piece is
really taking a line from a song

'and turning it into this maelstrom
of variations and notes.'

Be careful not to make accent
on the short note.

Because I can feel a PA-dam,
PUM-peem...PUM-pum, PUM-pum...

This happens
because we have not the voice.

EDUARDO HUMS WITH PIANO

'The theme has a hugely
song-like quality.

'Even though it is
the simplest of themes,

'it is one of the deepest pieces.

'I don't think he ever exposes
himself more than in that piece.'

Emanuel Ax is one of the world's
greatest Chopin interpreters.

James met up with him

while he was rehearsing at the
Barbican in London.

The trick is to slow down here...

He asked him how important he
thinks the singing line is

throughout the Chopin repertoire.

If you play anything
of Chopin very slowly

it still sounds good.

You know, all the fast Etudes
that are meant to be played

at an absurd rate of speed,

especially if you follow
his metronome markings,

which are, I think,
impossible for any human being,

but in fact,
if you're just practising,

if you just play slowly,

it sounds so good.

You know? It sounds
like a beautiful singing line

at a slow tempo.

So I think he was always
thinking that way.

And in the fourth Ballade too,
of course.

In that piece, in particular,

what I've always felt

is that he seems
to somehow find a way

of going from absolutely
the most simple

and, kind of, not outward music,

to something that is
completely passionate

and then actually goes haywire.

You know, so you start with...
PLAYS SHORT EXCERPT

Just that.

And then the next time
you add a little bit...

Buh-buh-buh-buh...

And the next time you add
a little bit of that...

And then the next time you
start going a little bit mad...

..everything actually
not in units of four or eight,

but always seven, or ten, or
something crazy, you know?

And then, eventually, comes the coda.

Which is literally berserk.

Especially after the calm.

So I think in this piece
it really goes from that, to...

And the more you can
find a way of doing that,

I think, the grander
the performance becomes.

So it's difficult at the beginning,
especially, to find a way

of playing really, really
beautifully, and really simply.

I don't know. I haven't found it yet!
But that's what I'm looking for!

The main thing we can be sure
of in Chopin's personal life

is that we don't know
the whole story.

But in his music,
although we don't get answers,

we do get a sense of the sheer
depth of his emotional experience.

And it is this that is so
relentlessly attractive

to artists like James.

In November 1848,

in failing health,
Chopin returned to Paris

to consult his doctors.

Intriguingly, Jenny Lind made an
unexpected visit to Paris

the following spring, as soon as
she had completed her contract

at Her Majesty's Theatre.

This was despite the fact
that she disliked Paris,

and at the time of her visit
the city was in the grip

of a severe cholera outbreak.

For three weeks, she stayed in a
house on the Champs-Elysees

and Chopin wrote in a letter
that she had visited him,

and sung in his apartment.

Eventually, fearing for her health,

Jenny left the city.

She must have been painfully aware

that she would probably
never see him again.

Shortly after her departure,

Chopin received a mysterious
package containing 25,000 francs

to cover his considerable debts.

The money may have come

from his Scottish piano student,
James Stirling.

but Jenny Lind was famous for her
wealth and philanthrophy.

Was this perhaps a
farewell gift from her?

Jenny Lind wasn't the only one of
the singers who rallied round.

Pauline Viardot
was in regular contact

and sent reports of
his health to George Sand.

And his old friend,

the beautiful Polish countess
Delfina Potocka's name

appears regularly in the
correspondence of his final months.

In September 1849,

Chopin's friends rented him
a small apartment

in Paris's grandest square,

the Place Vendome.

It was situated in the magnificent
building that is now home

to the ancient French
jewellery house of Chaumet.

What an incredible place!

Yes. It's enormous!

Yes. There's a view
of the Place Vendome.

According to Beatrice de Plinval,

Chopin was accommodated in a small
apartment on the ground floor.

This grand salon was at the time
rented by Delfina Potocka.

She wrote that, on the 15th
of October 1849, on that day,

she is visiting Chopin,

and he was...he was
terribly...anxieux. Mm.

And he ask her, "I don't...
I don't want to leave the life

"without the song of my piano.

"Could you manage something for me?"

So she decided to move the bed
of Chopin where was the piano -
it means here. Mm.

And he spent the last three days of
his life here.

So in a such beautiful room, with
that view on the Place Vendome,

we have all...

We live with Chopin here. Mm. Yeah.

You feel it. Yeah, absolutely.

On the 15th of October,
as this painting describes,

Delfina Potocka sang to Chopin

as he lay dying on his bed,
here in this room.

People argue over what she sang
and who else was here

but what's most fascinating
is that Chopin's last request

was not so much to hear a piano,
or his own music,

but the sound of a woman's voice.

It's my little office.

Beatrice had one more thing
to show James and Natalya.

Show me your hand.

That's a beautiful hand.
Oh, well, thank you!

Mine is here because I have a little
problem, which is...voila.

Wow. Look.

Look here. This is the hand
of Chopin.

HE GASPS

Amazing. Can I put mine on top? Yes.
I'm shaking, can you see?

Ama... It's very similar.

It's not so different, ah?
Yeah, no so different. Wow.

Long fingers. Very, yeah.
And very skinny.

Yes, that's why... He was...
tuberculosis. This is a cast
at the end of his life.

It's almost like a child's hand.

Yes. Yes, but look how delicate
it is.

Yeah, and the wrists too, like mine,
very small and thin. Very similar.

And you see...

Oh, that is just...amazing.

Amazing.

Living here myself since 40 years,

I have...the emotion.

This is the test of the genius. Mm.

When you live on the Place Vendome
and when you live in this...salon,

and when each day
you have the emotion...

Yeah.

..that's it.
SHE CHUCKLES

Very good.

Ahhh.

Even you.

Around two o'clock in the morning
of October 17th 1849,

Chopin died.

He was 39 years old.

Chopin was very famous
being a teacher, being a pianist,
being a composer,

but when he died, I mean, it was
the true beginning of his...legacy.

Chopin's funeral
was an extraordinary
and spectacular affair.

The facade of this grand church,
the Church of the Madeleine,

was draped with huge black
velvet cloths.

In the centre, a large badge,

embroidered in silver
with the initials FC.

The church was packed with
up to 3,000 people.

French and Polish aristocrats
and fashionable society

far outnumbered Chopin's friends
and fellow musicians.

The ceremony began with a momentous
orchestral arrangement

of Chopin's own B Flat Minor Sonata.

The highlight of this grand ceremony

was a full performance
of Mozart's Requiem.

Among the soloists
was Chopin's friend and collaborator
Pauline Viardot.

The magnificence of Chopin's funeral

gives some indication of
the strength of his reputation
at the time of his death.

The astonishing thing is that
he managed to impose his own method

and his own will
and his own standards

and his own way of doing things

on the musical world.

He turned himself into a kind of...
a sort of untouchable, in a way.

By the beginning of the 1840s,
in Paris,

he had a completely unique position.

He didn't have to give endless
concerts to prove how good he was.

He gave pitifully few concerts and
was heard by very, very few people,

and yet the entire musical world was
utterly convinced that he was, er...

right up there as possibly
the greatest.

He ceased to be a human being
in the eyes of his audiences,

in the eyes of Poles,

of the Polish intelligentsia
in particular, long before he died.

He became an idea.
He became a...monument.

After his death, Chopin's heart
was removed from his body

and taken to Warsaw to be venerated
in a special tomb,

currently being renovated
in time for the grand
bicentenary celebrations.

This canonisation of Chopin

is undoubtedly one of the reasons
why the history and the legend
of Chopin's life

are sometimes hard to unravel.

Certainly, the details
of Chopin's relationship
with all of the singers in his life

remain tantalisingly incomplete.

What's undeniable is their legacy.

Chopin's great achievement was to
find not just a new musical language

but a new voice for the piano.

Through his singing style of
composing and playing,

he discovered an almost organic
human sound within the instrument

and it's this echo of
the human voice within his music

that gives it a power that still
mesmerises us today.

Although we will never know exactly
what the voices of Konstancja
Gladkowska, Delfina Potocka,

Pauline Viardot or Jenny Lind
really sounded like,

their singing is immortalised
somewhere deep inside
Chopin's music.

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