CHOPIN IN PARIS : THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE ROMANTIC COMPOSER

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.