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Chopin's Piano: A Journey through Romanticism
Author: Paul Kildea
Illustrator:
Illustrator:
Retail Price: | $22.99 |
Betabooks Price | $18.39 |
ISBN: 9780141980560
Format: Paperback
Published: June 2019
Published By: Penguin
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Published: June 2019
Published By: Penguin
Stock Availability
Titles that are READY TO SHIP will be sent from our warehouse within 2 business days while stocks last. Click here for more details.
Product Description
Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted up to the monastery in the mountains where he and Sand lodged. Kildea traces the history of the Preludes, their pianists, their interpretations, and the history of the Mallorquin piano itself, to find an unexpected path through the history of romantic music - via Wanda Landowska in Berlin in 1913, Paris in 1940-41 when the Nazis seized the piano, down to the end of romantic music. It is an astonishing narrative and detective story, an unclassifiable and thrilling book, which explores in an original way the changing meaning of music through time.Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted up to the monastery in the mountains where he and Sand lodged. Kildea traces the history of the Preludes, their pianists, their interpretations, and the history of the Mallorquin piano itself, to find an unexpected path through the history of romantic music - via Wanda Landowska in Berlin in 1913, Paris in 1940-41 when the Nazis seized the piano, down to the end of romantic music. It is an astonishing narrative and detective story, an unclassifiable and thrilling book, which explores in an original way the changing meaning of music through time.Paul Kildea is a professional conductor and pianist (director of the Four Winds Festival in Australia and a former director of the Wigmore Hall in London) who writes about music with the insight of an insider. In 2013 Allen Lane/Penguin published his outstanding biography of Benjamin Britten to enormous acclaim. It is now widely recognised as the best book on its subject- the Financial Times called it 'unquestionably the music book of the year'. He lives in Berlin.