Chopin, Frederic Books

Chopin: Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by his Pupils

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Gift for mother 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3V2VGA1KQTPLV Chopin book review that I bought for my mother...

Lessons with Chopin 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

What can be better than taking lessons with Chopin? This book is very objective. The sources were his students' letters and the chapters are very well-organised.
The higher the level you are in playing piano/music, the more you get.

Not worth it 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book is just a cut and paste from other publications by and about Chopin. If you want to learn someething about piano playing this will deliver suggestions but with a horrible choppy cadence. If you want to learn more about Chopin you won't find it here. This book is tedious and I'm sorry I bought it.

Editorial Review:

The accounts of Chopin's pupils, acquaintances and contemporaries, together with his own writing, provide valuable insights into the musician's pianistic and stylistic practice, his teaching methods and his aesthetic beliefs. This unique collection of documents, edited and annotated by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, reveals Chopin as teacher and interpreter of his own music. Included in this study is extensive appendix material that presents annotated scores, and personal accounts of Chopin's playing by pupils, writers, and critics.

Frederic Chopin (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers)

Mike Venezia

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Editorial Review:

Presents a biography of Frédéric Chopin

Chopin's Letters

Frederic Chopin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Deeply poignant 4 out of 5 stars.
38 of 38 people found this review helpful.

Reading the early passages in Chopin's letters, one is almost heartbroken by the youth, the enthusiasm, the childlike good humor evident therein. Chopin at 17 was a wide-eyed kid from Warsaw with unparalleled musical talent and his whole life in front of him, the world apparently his oyster. To read his letters in subsequent years -- after the Russian invasion of Poland that stranded him in Paris; the abortive betrothal to Maria Wodzinska; the complex and finally tragic relationship with George Sand -- is to watch a man reach adulthood step by step. Though they contain only small, tantalizing glimpses of Chopin's opinions on music, the letters make for an effective counterpoint to his immortal compositions. The man who wrote the great Ballades and Scherzi was just a man like any other: he was annoyed at lazy servants, he unconsciously exploited his friends, he wanted to move in the circles of great aristocrats, he had provincial and prejudiced opinions. The lesson is banal, but true, and vividly made clear in these letters.

Editorial Review:

Nearly 300 letters reveal Chopin as both man and artist and illuminate his fascinating world—Europe of the 1830’s and 1840’s. "They abound in delightful gossip, are merry rather than malicious, are engagingly witty, and at times their humor becomes positively Rabelaisian."—Books. Preface. Index.

Chopin In Paris: The Life And Times Of The Romantic Composer

Tad Szulc

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Frederic Chopin was in many ways a contradictory figure: a passionately patriotic Pole, he left his country for good at the age of 21; frail and almost sexless, he was famous for a seven-year love affair with the novelist George Sand; shy, lonely, and retiring, he was inevitably surrounded by friends and admirers. In Chopin in Paris, biographer Tad Szulc has produced a dishy account of Chopin's most creative and tempestuous period, his 18-year sojourn in France. It's also a portrait of a unique time, when musical and artistic luminaries such as Chopin, Balzac, Hugo, Liszt, Berlioz, Delacroix, and Schumann ran in the same heady Parisian circles.

What it's not is a detailed study of Chopin's music. The author of critically praised books about Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II, Szulc sets out in search of Chopin the man, "the human dimension" he finds missing in other, more musically oriented biographies. What he finds is not always attractive; tortured through much of his life by physical and psychological illness, Chopin emerges as an often fussy, distant, manipulative man, as well as something of a snob. It's a tribute to his genius as a composer, Szulc writes, that he was befriended by some of the greatest minds of his age, including the larger-than-life figure of George Sand: "Fryderyk Chopin gave the world a treasure in music. The world gave Chopin a treasure in human beings." Commendably, Szulc refrains from editorializing about the composer's life and habits, in particular Chopin's break with Sand. Instead, he allows his wealth of primary sources--including diaries, memoirs, letters, and Chopin's own brief journal--to speak for themselves.

Abby Whiteside on Piano Playing : Indispensables of Piano Playing - Mastering the Chopin Etudes and Other Essays

Abby Whiteside

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Two of piano pedagogue Abby Whiteside's most influential essays, "Indispensables of Piano Playing," from 1955, and "Mastering the Chopin Etudes," from 1969, are reprinted in this volume, along with several shorter pieces. Whiteside's iconoclastic but firmly held beliefs are still provocative: "the pianist cannot control tone quality," "the importance of a prescribed fingering is practically nil," and "time spent on scales is not used to best advantage" are among them. But Whiteside backs up her ideas persuasively, and even pianists who cannot go along with her all the way will likely find themselves altering aspects of their techniques.

Whiteside bases all pianism on motions of the upper arms (confusingly called "top arms" in "Indispensables") and de-emphasizes anything to do with the fingers. She sees the forearm and fingers only as extensions of the upper arm, which is responsible for speed and accuracy. She is good at imagery in pressing her points: skating, jazz players, and untrained children are recurrent points of reference. Another of her main principles, the idea of basic rhythm, is well characterized by musical examples.

Readers would do well to begin with the foreword to "Mastering the Chopin Etudes" (written by Joseph Prostakoff and Sophia Rosoff, whose teaching is still based on the Whiteside principles), which helpfully clarifies some of the ideas from the outsider's perspective. "Mastering" refines many of the points from "Indispensables," and is best read first. Although "Indispensables" is divided into chapters, much of the same material is covered all the way through, and there is a great deal of overlap with "Mastering." Undoubtedly, there are some ideas in these essays that made complete sense only from the source herself, but there is much here of benefit to pianists of all levels. --William R. Braun

Chopin: Pianist's Repertoire: A Graded Practical Guide (The Pianist's Repertoire)

Eleanor Bailie

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Editorial Review:

This work is part of a series of comprehensive practical guides for the solo piano. A reference book for all levels - amateur, student, teacher and professional - the purpose of the series is to help pianists with their choice of music to suit their own styles and capabilities, and to discuss their technical and interpretive demands. This volume provides a complete survey of Chopin's music for solo piano, including a graded list of his works together with detailed suggestions for study and performance. An extended introduction places Chopin in the context of his time.

The Cambridge Companion to Chopin (Cambridge Companions to Music)

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Editorial Review:

This Companion is designed to provide the enquiring music lover with helpful insights into a musical style that recognizes no contradictions between the accessible and the sophisticated, between the popular and the significant.

The Chopin Companion: Profiles of the Man and the Musician (Norton Library, N668)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

if you play Chopin then this book is a must 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

The most concise and definitive work of this type for the Chopin pianist. Each chapter, written by a different author, is a gem, and as a whole the book describes nearly all of Chopin's works in detail. It is very logically organized and musically delighful! Examples abound, references both to and from other composers works are enlightening and with very few exceptions, the authors are quite objective in their discussions of Chopin's music. Whenever I decide to record or play a Chopin piece, I still first read the commentary in this book which relates to the piece. The book contains several databases of Chopin's works, one chronological and one by type of piece. The chapter covering Chopin's songs is worth the price of the entire book. If you play Chopin, then this book is required reading. If you do not play Chopin then you will after reading the book. And you can't have my copy, which I purchased in 1973 and which I still use every day.

gerry

Chopin: The Four Ballades (Cambridge Music Handbooks)

Jim Samson

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Editorial Review:

Chopin's four ballades are widely regarded as being among the most significant extended works for solo piano of the nineteenth century. In an illuminating discussion, Jim Samson combines history and analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of these popular piano works, investigating the social and musical background to Chopin's music, evaluating the many printed editions of the ballads before considering their critical reception and the differing interpretations of well-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century pianists.

Chopin's Funeral

Benita Eisler

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of the acclaimed biography Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame brings to life a closely fo-
cused portrait of another great romantic artist, Frédéric Chopin.

At twenty-one, Chopin fled Russian-occupied Poland for exile in France. He would never see his native country again. With only two public concerts in as many years, he became a star of Parisian society and a legendary performer at its salons, revered by his great contemporaries Schumann, Liszt, and the painter Eugène Delacroix. Blessed with genius, success, and the love of Europe’s most famous—and infamous—woman novelist, George Sand, Chopin’s years of triumph ended with his expulsion from paradise: less than two decades after his conquest of Paris, the composer lay destitute and dying in the arms of Sand’s estranged daughter, Solange. Chopin’s Funeral is the story of this fatal fall from grace, of an Oedipal tragedy unfolding, and of illness and loss redeemed by the radical breakthrough of the composer’s last style.

Richly textured and artfully compressed, Chopin’s Funeral is an intimate close-up of an embattled man, grappling with conflict on all sides: family violence, political passions, and, not least, his own dependency and pride. With consummate skill Benita Eisler tells the story of the artist as exile, of an explosive love affair, and of worlds—private and public—convulsed by momentous change.