Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Migrated podcast image for: Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

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 5: London Calling

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Episode 5

Episode 5: London Calling

London Calling

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

Donald Macleod focuses on Chopin's disastrous tour of Britain.

Donald Macleod explains how an invitation to London turned into an extended tour of Britain, with disastrous consequences for Chopin's fragile health.

Donald Macleod explores the music and life of Chopin, zooming in on five key places on his lifetime itinerary. Today, an invitation to London turns into an extended tour of Britain, with disastrous consequences for the composer's fragile health.

Chopin had visited London once before, in 1837, but on that occasion he went strictly incognito. This time, he was invited to play - and as the invitation coincided with fallout from the 1848 Revolution, he was more than happy to have an excuse to get out of the French capital for a few weeks. The main facilitator of Chopin's British sojourn was a middle-aged Scotswoman, Miss Jane Wilhelmina Stirling, a sugar heiress. She had studied the piano with Chopin in Paris, and clearly held something of a torch for him. After a hectic round of concerts, matinées and soirées in the English capital, Miss Stirling whisked her beloved teacher off to her ancestral home north of the border - then back down south to a concert in Manchester, attended by what must have seemed to Chopin an intimidatingly large audience, of 1,200 people - then up to to Scotland again for a round of aristocratic socializing he could well have done without, followed by concerts in Glasgow and Edinburgh - then down once more to what Chopin was by now calling "this hellish London", whose infernal fogs must have been a nightmare for the consumptive composer. Here Chopin performed one final engagement before returning, a husk of his former self, to Paris. He never recovered his health.

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

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Composer of the Week

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Episode 5: London Calling

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3