Review - Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions (Annik LaFarge)

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.

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