Rating: 
Summary: An exceptionally vivid portrait
Review: This is an extraordinarily vivid and detailed portrait. Mr. Szulc has woven together intimate details about Chopin with the broader history of politics and society of Paris and Poland in the 1800's. That may sound rather dry, but it actually makes for incredibly engaging reading - even if you are already quite familiar with the life of Chopin. I do have strong objections to Szulc's "diagnosis" of Chopin as manic-depressive however. With all the information he provides, he fails to set forth any concrete evidence that Chopin suffered from that illness. It's a completely inaccurate label for Chopin. And, the author does seem rather adamant in his assurances that Chopin had no bisexual predilections. While there is "no evidence to suggest" that he had homosexual liaisons (with the Marquis de Custine for example), there is also no evidence to indicate that he did not. But those are minor points in a biography that will otherwise not fail please. This book truly transports the reader into Chopin's world and, ultimately, provides a framework for a greater appreciation of the genius of his music.
Rating: 
Summary: fatuous statements mar a fascinating life-story
Review: To concentrate on Chopin's time in Paris, and to try and trace his connections and acquaintances in that extraordinarily fertile artistic stamping ground, is a very good idea and focus for a biography of Chopin's short life. It is a fascinating milieu and it says a great deal for the facts uncovered here that the story can survive a verbose and gushing written style, and some factual carelessness. One is confronted time and time again by statements such as these: 'The year 1834 was a good one for Chopin whose life, like the chord spread of an arpeggio, went alternatively from the bottom upwards or from the top downwards'. Or the final sentence in the whole book, a summing-up: 'Frederick Chopin gave the world a treasure in music. The world gave Chopin a treasure in human beings'. This is typicalof the windy flow that so impedes the sense in this book. Don't editors read this stuff before it gets into print? Factually, the book falls down particularly badly when dealing with matters musical; for example we are told: 'Hector Berlioz made Romanticism's breakthrough in 1825 when he conducted a performance of his requiem at Saint-Roch Church. No performance of such magnitude and venturesome boldness had ever been presented before'. A muddle here - Berlioz's Requiem was written in 1837 and first performed at 'Les Invalides', and yes, did poleaxe the musical world. There was a Berlioz performance at St.Roch Church in 1825 - that was the Mass, an immature and not particularly large scale work (recently rediscovered and performed by John Eliot Gardiner) which Berlioz himself discarded after one performance, and which had no widespread impact. Also, the idea that Romanticism suddenly took everyone by surprise is fatuous. We are told Meyerbeer's opera 'Robert the Devil' deals with 'religious mythology'. It doesn't - it's a gothic penny-dreadful with skating nuns. These examples are indicative of a careless approach to the facts and make one question the primary research done in this book. Chopin was obviously a complex, contradictory character - he comes across as self-obsessed, cold, intellectually rather narrow and rather snobbish (I would have much rather had dinner with Georges Sand),a self professed ardent Polish patriot who never went back to Poland, or showed much desire to do so - there is meat here for a good probing biography. Instead this book is capsized by pseudo-Hollywood puffery and rank journalese.
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