Comment by kashyapc
My top book of the year:
Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, Alan Walker
A riveting read by a legendary musicologist and biographer. Walker spent about ten years researching this. It is 700 pages, which seems daunting but he makes this authoritative bio absolutely enjoyable. It's also a "corrective biography", it dispels a lot of myths. This book is one of the best examples of accessible writing with flair. What a writer!
Throughout the book, Walker tastefully quotes musical phrases (in notation) from Chopin's works to situate them in context. I often paused reading and put on the track on a given page (nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes, etc). It made the reading experience incredibly rich and fun. Other things I enjoyed: Chopin's letters to his friends and family, life in aristocratic salons of Paris, London, Warsaw, and more—Chopin had unparalleled access. Of course, there's also a lot of gut-wrenching stuff. As the book's blurb says, it really is for both the casual music lover and the professional pianist.
If you haven't discovered them yet, give a listen to Chopin's nocturnes. But please, give them an attentive listen and play them on a high-quality audio system. Here[1] is one of his finest nocturnes (it is less famous than the "happier" nocturne that follows it, Op. 9 No. 2).
[1] Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9 No. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThMGf07UBHQ
>it is less famous than the "happier" nocturne that follows it
Funny, despite the youtube numbers to me it always seemed to me like Op.1 b-flat minor was the one that would be overplayed left and right (movies and whatnot), maybe because people thought they fit be a moody scene or piece of art better.
>give them an attentive listen and play them on a high-quality audio system
I have no music background and I would like tips on this because I'm partial to the preludes (raindrop etc) for example and they have softer key and louder key parts and I want to blast the softer side without overblasting and distortion occuring when it gets to the louder end of the piece and I wish somebody would remaster a normalized version of the recordings. I don't know if this is idiotic since I have no idea how worse it would make the pieces...