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Donald Macleod explores the music and life of Chopin, zooming in on five key places on his lifetime itinerary. Today, after setting out from Warsaw on what was to have been an extended foreign tour, Chopin finds himself a permanent exile in Paris.

Chopin reached Paris via Vienna and Stuttgart, where he had learnt of Russia's brutal suppression of the Polish Uprising. Fearing that if he returned to Poland he might never be allowed to leave again, he decided to stay put - in what was, after all, in those days, the epicentre of the musical universe. An early appearance at the Salle Pleyel - enthusiastically reviewed by Francois Joseph Fétis, a famous musicologist and senior critic of the Revue Musicale - spread Chopin's name like wildfire, and he quickly became a major celebrity on the Parisian cultural scene. Uncomfortable in front of large audiences, he preferred to perform in salons, and made his living teaching piano to the well-heeled. It was at an extremely well-heeled soirée at the Hôtel de France, hosted by Liszt and his mistress, the Countess Marie d'Agoult, that Chopin first encountered the novelist George Sand - snappier pen-name of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dudevant. Chopin's initial revulsion with Sand gradually turned first to fascination, then attraction; they were to become one of the most celebrated - or perhaps infamous - artistic couples of the 19th century.