Rating: 
Summary: What a Disappointment!
Review: Reading this book, I couldn't help thinking that Tad Szulc had merely stapled together his notes. I persisted in reading the entire book only because of my keen interest in the subject. However, reading the book was a chore.First, it is poorly written. Whether one looks at inidividual sentences, paragraphs, chapters, or the overall plan of the book, the writing is careless. Consider the following: "[George Sand] needed not worry about money." What a clunker! Szulc seems compelled to include digressions in parentheses in every other sentence. Topic sentences typically occur at the end of paragraphs. The same material gets repeated again and again in different chapters and in virtually the same language. The chronology both within and between chapters jumps around confusingly. Second, the book is clotted with irrelevant detail. Did you know , for instance, that Delecroix, after visiting Chopin and Sand, wrote them a letter asking that they send him a pair of underwear that he had left behind? Or how about: "Leo (his friends called him Leon)..." Third and most damning, the author lacks insight and thus fails to help the reader gain insight into Chopin's character. By the end of the book, one knows bits and pieces about who Chopin was, but there is no coherent vision, no sense of knowing the man. By comparison, the recent biography of Johannes Brahms by Jan Swafford does a superb job of illuminating the character of what would seem a far more complex psyche.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating story thats gets bogged down in details
Review: Szulc has written a deeply researched book that is great for the first third then starts to get hopelessly bogged down with minutia as he gets into an extended "he said, she said" over Chopin's relationship with George Sand. What starts out with promise ends up more a reference book than an engaging story.
Rating: 
Summary: This book can teach you to love Chopin and his music.
Review: Szulc's biography of Chopin is the first biography I have read about a musician. My purpose in reading the book was to become acquainted with the man Chopin. I am a history major and a pianist and very impressed with Szulc's work. Using a multitude of primary sources, Szulc accurately describes who Chopin was. Szulc's greatest success is in portraying Chopin's personality. As a result of reading this book, I have become enthralled with Chopin's music and now delight to play it much more than I did before I read the book. This book has the ability to attach the reader to Chopin and even let him feel some of Chopin's emotion, which made him the finest Romantic pianist and composer. This book is a marvelous achievement, historically sound and musically inspirational.
Rating:
Summary: Where was the editor?
Review: The good stuff: Good history of Chopin and his life in Paris society. I especially liked how information about specific music pieces was woven into the biography. While the background on George Sand was a little long-winded, I enjoyed reading it nevertheless. In all, this biography brought Chopin to life for me and strengthened my interest in his music. The bad stuff: The author did not always present Chopin's life history in a sensical order - too much jumping back and forth making it somewhat difficult to follow. On many occassions I read a complete sentence or paragraph that had already been included in a previous chapter. Too much repetition - How many times can we be told how sickly Chopin was? We get it already! And the final clincher - Chopin was once referred to as "Chop in". Where was the editor?
Rating:
Summary: Where was the editor?
Review: The good stuff: Good history of Chopin and his life in Paris society. I especially liked how information about specific music pieces was woven into the biography. While the background on George Sand was a little long-winded, I enjoyed reading it nevertheless. In all, this biography brought Chopin to life for me and strengthened my interest in his music. The bad stuff: The author did not always present Chopin's life history in a sensical order - too much jumping back and forth making it somewhat difficult to follow. On many occassions I read a complete sentence or paragraph that had already been included in a previous chapter. Too much repetition - How many times can we be told how sickly Chopin was? We get it already! And the final clincher - Chopin was once referred to as "Chop in". Where was the editor?
Rating:
Summary: Chopin in Paris is for the Literate
Review: The most fantastic level of detail, insight and analysis on Chopin! However, the depth and sophistication rendered by Tad Szulc is done so in a manner that the typical English reader (with a poor command of the language) will find difficult. If you are a literate reader this is the ultimate book for the Chopin enthusiast.
Rating: 
Summary: A Major Biography
Review: There are a lot of things to say about this book, most of them good. You come away from the book with the feeling that you have a pretty good understanding of Chopin's personality and also of what his day to day existence was like. For example, I always had a picture of him being a very serious and uptight person. And while he could be very stiff and formal in public, Mr. Szulc shows that in private he could be quite different. Chopin did not like to give public concerts and you could pretty much count on your fingers and toes how many such concerts he gave in his whole career. But he did enjoy going out at night to the homes of friends for little "get togethers" and he would play the piano for hours at a time and would get people laughing with his imitations of acquaintances. He apparently had a great gift for mimicry. One of the best features of the book is that it quotes extensively from the letters, journals, etc. of Chopin and George Sand and also of friends such as the artist Eugene Delacroix. Chopin's personality really comes through in his letters. You can see his charm and his sense of humor but also his snobbery and nastiness. It also seems pretty clear that he was an anti-semite, although Mr.Szulc tries rather desperately to rescue him from that charge by saying that Chopin really just didn't like the Jews in the music publishing business, because he felt they were trying to cheat him! He really didn't mind "other" Jews. Unfortunately, Chopin is quoted about 4-5 times making anti-semitic remarks but no examples are given of him having anything nice to say so I don't know why Mr. Szulc even tried to come to his defense in this particular area...I also learned from this book how highly regarded Chopin was as a pianist. I knew he was a great composer but he was also considered to be a great virtuoso, on the same level as Liszt. When playing at those private parties I mentioned above he would improvise for hours and it was said by knowledgeable people at the time that it was a great shame that the public never got to hear these remarkable improvisations. I also never knew that Chopin spent a great deal of his time giving piano lessons. He was apparently a very good teacher and the money he made teaching was a large part of his total income. There is a very touching section of the book that deals with the death at age 15 of Chopin's favorite (and most gifted) student, Carl Filtsch. Chopin felt that this boy had a unique and innate understanding of his music and this created a special bond between the two of them.Mr. Szulc explains early on that he is not a musician and therefore the book does not provide any musical insights. Mr. Szulc is forced into relying on and quoting the opinions of others when he makes brief forays into the technical aspects of the music. Professional musicians will probably find the book disappointing unless they only read the book to get a feel for the personalities involved. One last note of interest: The picture on the cover is an enlargement of the only known photograph of Chopin and is so revealing of his nature that it alone is almost worth the purchase price!
Rating:
Summary: Flawed but STILL Fascinating
Review: This book is a great read for anyone interested in learning more about Chopin and his love for music. You also get to learn about his love interest in George Sand. Szulc does a great job of keeping the material interesting as Chopin's contributions for all of time. This is a great book to have for anyone that loves Chopin!
Rating:
Summary: good book on his life and love: music and George Sand
Review: This book is a great read for anyone interested in learning more about Chopin and his love for music. You also get to learn about his love interest in George Sand. Szulc does a great job of keeping the material interesting as Chopin's contributions for all of time. This is a great book to have for anyone that loves Chopin!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but redundant, judgemental, and poorly paced...
Review: This book is well written from the standpoint of sustaining a narrative based purely on personal facts and historical data, and in making one person's life interesting to people now far removed from his time, but the book really begins to slow down and become pedantic somewhere near the middle. It is the fault of poor editing, I believe, and the inclusion of several strange passages where the writer interjects his own opinions or judgements both on Chopin's character and the times he lived in were just redundant, annoying, and superfluous. By the time you finish reading the book your respect for Chopin will probably be lessened noticeably, not only because the writer seems to always dwell on what he considers the "faults" of the musician's character, but also because the unending reiteration of their cataloguing becomes fatiguing by the end. Who cares, really? Does it matter when listening to this man's Nocturnes or Polonaises or the incredible Etudes that he was a good businessman, extremely "careful" with his money, and that he was anti-semetic, often verbally abusing his Jewish music publishers? Does it matter that Chopin was a hypochondriac, a gossip, a manipulative, immature, emotionally-inept recluse? Will it matter to you? You will have to decide after reading this book, as all the "sordid" details of his life are open to your perusal. When confronted by Chopin's "faults" and "sins" or "defects of character" I was not impressed in the least. In fact, even though the author goes out of his way to make one aware of these things, nothing he could say really surprised me, and the attempts on his part to prejudice the reader seemed clumsy and ill-handled. A better writer would have been persuasive, the would-be moralist Szulc ends up merely berating and nagging. There are better biographies out there.
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