Chopin's Piano

In Search of the Instrument That Transformed Music

By: Paul Kildea

Narrated by: Matthew Waterson

Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

In November 1838, Frederic Chopin, George Sand, and her two children sailed to Majorca to escape the Parisian winter. They settled in an abandoned monastery at Valldemossa in the mountains above Palma, where Chopin finished what would eventually be recognized as one of the great and revolutionary works of musical Romanticism: his 24 Preludes. There was scarcely a decent piano on the island, so Chopin worked on a small pianino made by a local craftsman, Juan Bauza.

Chopin's Piano traces the history of Chopin's 24 Preludes through the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them, and the traditions they came to represent. Yet it begins and ends with the Majorcan pianino, which assumed an astonishing cultural potency during the Second World War as it became, for the Nazis, a symbol of the man and music they were determined to appropriate as their own.

After Chopin, the unexpected hero of Chopin's Piano is the great keyboard player Wanda Landowska, who rescued the pianino from Valldemossa in 1913 and who would later become one of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century. Paul Kildea shows how her story resonates with Chopin's, simultaneously distilling part of the cultural and political history of mid-20th-century Europe and the US.

©2018 Paul Kildea (P)2018 HighBridge Company

MUSIC

Paul Kildea is a multifaceted talent who has written an interesting biography of Frederic Chopin and a lesser-known Polish musician, Wanda Landowska, who revivified Chopin’s  music.  Whether one knows anything of music or history, Kildea expertly entertains listener/readers with “Chopin’s Piano”. 

What is not realized by many is that Chopin’s work is written with early-stage pianos that made composition as much a work of mind as performance. Chopin is noted as a Romanticist composer considered among the most creative of all time.    For that reason, the sound of Chopin’s work has changed with the times.

The thread of Kildea’s history is the Bauza piano’s location in the 21st century. It's whereabouts remains unknown. This piano was used by Chopin between 1838-39 when living with  George Sand in Majorca.  A striking point in Kildea’s story is that the Bauza piano is a crudely formed instrument carved from local softwood.  Its innards are made of felt, pig iron, and copper but its cultural importance is extraordinary and its provenance unquestioned.  It disappeared when confiscated by Nazi Germany when they ransacked Landowska’s home in Paris.

This flawed instrument is used to create compositions that are endlessly translated by pianoforte (soft and loud sound) from the use of harpsicords to modern Steinways.  Landowska, and many pianists of the 19th through the 21st century are listed by Kildea, showing the brilliance and variety of Chopin’s compositions.  Only a musical conductor turned author like Kildea could explain this to the public.  “Chopin’s Piano” is a small opening to a big world.

Zheed not Guide

Couldn’t they find someone who could pronounce French to read a book with so many French names in it?

Overall the book is very much worth reading but sometimes Kildea seems to be unable to resist showing off his knowledge of insignificant details (the dozen of acronyms of Nazi bureaucracies involved in the looting in France for example).

A good editor could have made this a better book.

Great Book

Informative, interesting and rich text. I never thought that I would be so impacted by poor narration, despite thoroughly enjoying the contents of the book. The narrator might have been fine if the book did not contain such a wealth of terminology in French. The narrator’s idea of speaking French is to use whatever little high school Spanish he knows and then roll the “r” sound Parisian style. But it was not only French: whenever there were some German words in the text, he also butchered them creatively. This was not minor. Proper selection of a narrator for quality books is critical to the success of the audio format.

Mistitled

Not cohesive, lacks a unifying theme. The narrator's phrasing is monotonous and irritating. I forced myself to finish it.

Herky Jerky Narrator

Narrator is too hard to follow - any mental visions (all important) are shattered against the jagged rocks of the narrator's hyperventilated, oddly fractured sentences (he pauses where there are no commas). The accent did not help. The book just became unintelligible noise.