“The Rossini of Poland” – Chopin’s Letters

In this richly textured essay, Emre Aracı meditates on Chopin’s life, letters, and legacy, framed through the resonant memory of Liszt performing his friend’s music in 1847 Constantinople. Traversing Istanbul’s Grand Rue de Péra, Paris’s Square d’Orléans, and the drawing rooms of Nohant and Sawston Hall, Aracı interweaves history with personal recollection—reflecting on musical friendships, poignant farewells, and the soulful intimacy revealed in Chopin’s newly translated letters. With characteristic lyricism, he evokes the spirit of a composer who was, as Balzac once wrote, “more a soul than a musician”.

It must have been shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, 18th June 1847, when the strains of one of Chopin’s mazurkas drifted into the ears of passers-by along the Grand Rue de Péra, the principal thoroughfare of Beyoğlu in that period. Yet this was no ordinary performance; on the contrary, did those whose path happened to lead them past the source of this music, and who recognised the familiar melodic motifs, realise that the very touch shaping those phrases belonged to none other than Liszt himself?

Frederic Chopin
 (Franz Xaver Winterhalter)

Even Sir Adolphus Slade, the British naval officer who knew 1840s Beyoğlu intimately and who wrote in his Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, etc., “The first day or two at Pera one feels the embarrassment of the wise men who visited the moon. What with chibouques in one house, sherbet in another, a gaze on a beautiful scene here, a stroll in a cool shade there, the day slips away insensibly”, might well have appended a new episode to his fantastical lunar reverie had he known of Liszt’s presence. For to imagine that Liszt once performed Chopin in nineteenth-century Constantinople seems, from our contemporary vantage point—jostled amid the unceasing flow of humanity on today’s İstiklâl Caddesi—as improbable as the notion, once entertained in that very age, that one day mankind might indeed reach the moon.

Much has been written about Franz Liszt’s visit to Istanbul in June 1847: articles published, concerts given, papers delivered. Yet our knowledge of that five-week sojourn remains curiously scant. As I last noted in the July 2021 issue (No. 177) of Andante, Liszt gave a matinée performance on 18th June at the residence of the Franchini family in Beyoğlu, and in his programme, he made a point of including a work by his friend Chopin. 

It is surely from that very concert that the melodic passages heard by those passing along the Grand Rue de Péra on that summer’s day must have emanated.

According to a review published in the Journal de Constantinople on 21st June 1847, Liszt’s performance at times produced a palpable thrill that seemed to ripple through the hall like an electric current: “this vibration envelops the audience, enchants with admiration and astonishment, and creates a communion that echoes like a cry directed at the very soul of the artist”. In this highly accomplished and deeply affecting interpretation, Liszt offered not only a transcendence of technical difficulty, but also an intense and unmistakable passion.

Journal de Constantinople, 16 June 1847

As the newspaper listed, the third item on the programme consisted of “two of Chopin’s most beautiful mazurkas”. In fifth place came the Hexameron, a work notable for both its formidable technical challenges and its melodic richness—created in 1837 at the behest of Italian princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso, who herself had once passed through Istanbul and was the subject of another article of mine (see: 'An Italian Princess Listening to Donizetti Pasha’s Orchestra', Andante, February 2021, issue No. 172). The Hexameron, as its name suggests, was a collective composition—six variations on the march Suoni la tromba from Bellini’s opera I Puritani, arranged by a constellation of composer-pianists including Chopin, Thalberg, Herz, Czerny, and Pixis. Liszt contributed the introduction, the second variation, the linking sections, and the finale, thereby lending the work a cohesive artistic structure. Chopin’s contribution stood out in the sixth variation, marked Largo, where his emotional depth and singular pianistic voice shone with particular intensity.

The Journal de Constantinople introduced this contemporary composer-pianist to Pera’s opera-accustomed audience as “the Rossini of Poland”—a telling comparison, given the hegemony of Italian opera at the time. Remarkably, Chopin was still very much alive at the time of this historic concert in Beyoğlu, then aged thirty-seven and living in Paris. Indeed, the German court painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter had rendered his profile in a pencil drawing just weeks earlier, on 2nd May of that same year.

Franz Liszt by Friedrich von Amerling (1838)

While Liszt was introducing Chopin to music lovers in Istanbul as “the Rossini of Poland”, the composer himself was, to be sure, residing in his modest apartment overlooking the private courtyard of the Square d’Orléans in Paris. Yet his health and living conditions were steadily deteriorating. By the summer of 1847, his decade-long relationship with the writer George Sand—who occupied two adjacent apartments—had grown increasingly fraught. Tensions arising from conflicts with Sand’s children, coupled with the temperamental differences between the pair, only served to deepen the rift, and by the end of that year, the relationship had all but collapsed.

Chopin’s apartment in the Square d’Orléans, Paris, adjacent to that of George Sand

Musically speaking, Chopin continued to compose, but his output had waned, and the chronic illness—soon to be recognised as tuberculosis—was limiting his public appearances. Financial difficulties, too, had begun to surface: his income relied heavily on private pupils and concerts, both of which were becoming increasingly scarce. It was a time marked by personal pain, a retreat into silence, and growing introspection.

And yet, in a long letter written from his apartment on the Place d’Orléans to his family in Warsaw on 28th March 1847, just before Easter, Chopin expressed a surprisingly hopeful outlook for the coming summer. “If you are wondering what I shall do this summer”, he wrote, “I shall tell you: as always, I shall go to Nohant as soon as the weather begins to warm. Until then, I shall remain here and give as many lessons as I can without tiring myself. As always, I shall teach at home”. But when he resumed the unfinished letter a week later, his tone had changed: “A week ago I wrote you all sorts of useless nonsense. Today I am alone again in Paris. Madame S[and], Solange, her cousin (Augustine) and Luce left the house three days ago. Yesterday they wrote to me from the country. They are all well and happy. The only trouble, as it was here, is the rain”.

As I read these lines, I feel as though I can sense that falling rain, and the depth of Chopin’s solitude in Paris, deep within my own soul. 

I am also struck—almost bewildered—by how a strange chain of coincidences can bridge centuries and spirits in the most unexpected ways. For I am reading that very letter, dated 28th March 1847, in the book Frederic Chopin ve 101 Seçme Mektup (Frederic Chopin and 101 Selected Letters)—Chopin's selected letters translated from the English into Turkish—and compiled by Arın Dilligil Bayraktaroğlu (Akılçelen Kitaplar, 2024).

On the cover is a strikingly lifelike three-dimensional portrait of Chopin, created by the Iranian visual artist Hadi Karimi, based on the composer’s death mask and a lock of his hair preserved in the Warsaw Museum. This volume transports me, across three decades, to a rainy late afternoon in Istanbul's Nişantaşı quarter, to the long-vanished Hachette Bookshop. There, I distinctly recall reaching for a biography of Chopin, written in English in the 1960s by Ateş Orga and first published in Tunbridge Wells in 1976. I remember reading, in its introduction, Honoré de Balzac’s remark that Chopin was “more a soul than a musician”, and asking myself: "Who is this Turkish author who has written a biography of Chopin?". Years later, I found my answer in abundance in Bir Türk Ailesinin Öyküsü, published in 1994. This poignant memoir, written in a romantic style by music writer and producer Ateş Orga’s father, Irfan Orga, was first published in English in London in 1950 under the title A Portrait of a Turkish Family, yet it would take nearly half a century for it to appear in Turkish translation. That, too, was the work of none other than Arın Bayraktaroğlu. 

In those years, Arın and Sinan Bayraktaroğlu were living in England, in Cambridgeshire, at Sawston Hall—a Tudor-era manor house that seemed to have emerged from the pages of a mediaeval legend. There, they ran an English-language school which they had founded, and which they administered with great dedication. In time, they would go on to establish the Turkish International Lycée on the same premises—a school where I too had the opportunity to teach music and history for a period.

"Sawston Hall seemed to have emerged from the pages of a mediaeval legend" (© Emre ARACI)

It was also thanks to Arın and Sinan Bayraktaroğlu that I first met Ateş Orga, whose biography of Chopin I had held in my hands that rainy afternoon in Nişantaşı. Our meeting took place at Sawston Hall, and it was within the spellbinding atmosphere of that house that a friendship was born—one which would later yield numerous CD recordings.

It is for this reason that, while reading Chopin’s letters in this newly published volume—brought into Turkish with Arın Hanım’s dedication and under the kind encouragement of Gülsin Onay—I feel myself once more in the company of friends, in a familiar and affectionate setting. Bayraktaroğlu’s translations are based on the originals preserved at the Fryderyk Chopin Institute and draw upon three principal sources: the editions by Opienski/Voynich, Sydow/Hedley, and David Frick. This selection comprises 101 letters and offers a broad perspective on the composer’s life.

In her introduction, Bayraktaroğlu informs us: “Frederic Chopin, in addition to being a prolific musician, was the author of hundreds of letters. Addressed to his family, close friends, the woman he loved (George Sand), his publishers and professional acquaintances, these letters offer insights into his compositions, his character, his personality, and his health. Through them, we come to know his teachers, colleagues and pupils; we learn whom he admired, whom he feared, and whose influence he sought. His love for his family, his patriotism, and his devotion to his Polish identity and culture are also strikingly evident”.

I now return to the letter featured as No. 70 in Bayraktaroğlu’s volume—the one Chopin began on 28th March 1847 and completed on 19th April, dreaming of a return to Nohant. “Today is the 19th”, he wrote. “Yesterday’s work was disrupted by a letter from Nohant. Madame S[and] writes that she will return to Paris at the end of next month and asks me to wait for them. It seems Solange is getting married (not to the young man I mentioned to you earlier). I wish them happiness. In the last letter, they all sounded joyful. That is why I feel so hopeful for the future. If there is anyone in this world who truly deserves to be happy, it is Madame S[and]”.

"In 1847 Chopin had already bid his final farewell to Sand’s home in Nohant" (© Emre ARACI)

And yet, though he was not yet aware of it, Chopin had already bid his final farewell to Sand’s country home in Nohant during the previous season. As Tad Szulc observes in his Chopin in Paris (1999), “He would never again return to the house and the countryside where, over seven extraordinary summers with George Sand, he composed some of his greatest works. Nearly half of the music he produced in his lifetime was written at Nohant: thirty of his sixty-eight opus numbers were born there”.

Chopin and Sand by Adolf Karpellus
(© Emre ARACI)

Indeed, in a letter to Sand dated 12th December 1846, Chopin once again alluded to the deeply affecting atmosphere of Nohant: “Who knows how wonderful it must be to watch the snowy landscape outside Nohant and the carnival prepared by the young people, all from the warmth of your drawing room”. In another letter to her, written on 26th November 1843, he wrote: “Try to rest before your journey and bring us Nohant’s fine air, for here we are at the mercy of the rain. Yesterday I waited until three o’clock for the weather to clear, then called for a carriage and went to visit Rothschild and Stockhausen, but achieved nothing. Today is Sunday. I am resting at home and shall not go out—not because I must stay in, but simply because I choose to”. As I read these lines, I find myself gazing at an old postcard bearing a reproduction of a painting of Chopin and Sand by Adolf Karpellus. The card was posted to Salzburg on 30th August 1917.

Reading this and other such passages in Arın Bayraktaroğlu’s Frederic Chopin and 101 Selected Letters transported me at once back to those cold winter days at Sawston Hall, to the warmth of the great hall where logs crackled in the fireplace beneath the grand mantelpiece bearing the date 1571—a room that had hosted many a concert, and which lives on in memory as a sanctuary of music and friendship.

"The warmth of the great hall where logs crackled in the fireplace at Sawston Hall"

The days when Franz Liszt introduced Chopin to Istanbul’s music lovers as “the Rossini of Poland”, and when the “fine air of Nohant” still breathed inspiration into his soul, may long since have slipped into the mists of time — 

— but when “two of Chopin’s most beautiful mazurkas” are heard, however faintly, from afar, all these memories stir once more, rising from the pages of this book, and that presence—“more a soul than a musician”—is brought gently back to life.

Emre Aracı’s article was originally published in Turkish under the title ‘Polonya’nın Rossini’si Chopin’in mektupları’ in the November 2024 issue (No. 217) of Andante.

Link to the original article in Turkish

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