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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Kate Molleson

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Composer of the Week: Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849): Episode 4: Retreat

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Episode 4

Episode 4: Retreat

Retreat

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849), Retreat

Chopin's life at Nohant, near Paris, where the composer wrote much of his finest music.

Donald Macleod discusses Chopin's life at Nohant, near Paris, where at his lover's estate the composer produced much of his finest music.

Donald Macleod explores the music and life of Chopin, zooming in on five key places on his lifetime itinerary. Today, we're at Nohant, a bucolic oasis some 150 miles south of Paris, where Chopin's lover - and, increasingly, carer - the novelist George Sand, had - by aristocratic standards - a modest country château. Here, over seven long summers, the composer produced much of his finest music.

If no-one's made a soap opera about Sand's household at Nohant, they should do. It would be a kind of French Upstairs, Downstairs, with squabbling servants, family tiffs, romantic intrigue and glamorous guests ... all to the soundtrack of Chopin's extraordinary music, caught in the white heat of creation, which in the words of one of those glamorous guests, the painter Eugène Delacroix, "would waft over us from the windows opening onto the garden, while he worked away; the music mingling with the singing of the nightingales and the scent of the roses". Over the years, the cracks began to appear in Chopin's relationship with Sand, and it eventually crumbled - unlike the house at Nohant, which is now preserved as a national monument.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod focuses on five places that were important to Chopin's work

Donald Macleod explores the music and life of Chopin, focusing on five places that were important to the composer's work

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Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Episode 4: Retreat

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