The life and career of Frédéric Chopin (“a man of noble ideas”, according to Debussy) have been much written about, and have given rise to numerous legends and exaggerated stories. The hackneyed clichés of the fragile and ailing artist, of the worldly seducer, and the unfortunate circumstances of his break-up with George Sand are all too well known to need re-telling here. Heinrich Heine said of Chopin that he was “the kindest, the most reserved and the most modest of men of genius”. The composer himself was notably reticent, but summed up his own complex personality with the words: “On the outside I am cheerful, but inside I am in turmoil.”

In addition to its staggering virtuosity, Chopin’s music is pervaded by an indefinable sadness that combines suffering, sensuousness and melancholy – characteristics that may owe something to his exile from his native Poland, which he left in 1830, never to return. The Nocturnes and some of the Preludes – several of which acquired sub-titles that the composer detested – give off a mysterious aura of poetry and comtemplation. “What emotions he was able to embody in music! And what passionate and melancholy reveries he liked to indulge in!” Berlioz recalled. Whatever sentiment is expressed in the music of Chopin, sensuousness remains one of the dominant elements of his aesthetic palette and of a musical style that was completely new and inimitable.