Reviews - Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions

13 reviews for:

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions

About the genesis of Chopin's Op 35 Sonata, with its famous (or infamous) funeral march. A fairly engaging read, designed more for the lay person. Rather than being about the piece, though, it's more about some circumstances in Chopin's life, George Sand, a few other characters, politics in Poland -- a wider contextual backdrop for the work. The author does hit all of the big names in Chopin scholarship with her research: Eigeldinger, Rink, Sampson, and Walker. I was left ... wanting a bit more.

snarkycrafter's review against another edition

3.5

medium-paced

Really good and interesting insight into the life, relationships, music, and final days of Chopin.

The author displays how Chopin influenced generations of musicians and even provided a website with myriad YouTube videos to accompany the reading.

nmuels's review against another edition

4.0

informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

adventurouspotato's review against another edition

3.0

reflective medium-paced

fallona's review against another edition

4.0

This is a very interesting, readable book with a fairly extensive bibliography that seems to be part-way between biography and travel writing. Despite my near-complete lack of any background in music, I found it easy to understand and enjoy the descriptions of music--and the availability of the companion website made it that much more accessible.

I went into reading this book with an understanding of Chopin as a symbol of Polish national identity far more than of his work as a pianist and composer--as a Polish American who has had some proximity to the cultural side of American Polonia, having some exposure to Chopin in this context is likely inevitable. The book’s narrative seems to approach Chopin almost from the opposite direction, predicting that the reader is familiar with Chopin first as a piano composer and second as a feature of Polish identity worldwide; I suspect that for such a reader, the way the author deals with Chopin-and-Poland would be just as readable and understandable as I found her approach to Chopin-and-piano-music.

There are places in the narrative where it briefly becomes more a story about someone else (the Marquis de Custine for a while, George Sand fairly regularly), but I don't consider that really a weakness--it is important context, and it is interesting.

All in all, it's a really interesting look at Chopin's impact on many people around the world both during his life and well after his death, but also at how Chopin's world shaped him.

I received an electronic copy of this book free through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.