An ideal composer biography should combine several qualities: a deep knowledge of the artist's life and milieu, fortified by a reexamination of all available sources; an intimate understanding of the composer's personality (and, when possible, some affection for it, too); and an ability to speak of the creative work in a manner that will edify both scholars and the general public, and take us all back to the music.
Alan Walker's “Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times” manages this hat trick very well indeed. Walker, a professor emeritus at McMaster University in Canada, is best known for his triumphant multi-volume biography of Franz Liszt, on which he worked for a quarter-century. Even for those of us who don't particularly like most of Liszt's music, Walker proved such a compelling storyteller and advocate that we would brighten when a new installation was set to arrive. And now he has moved on to Chopin (Walker uses the Polish first name — Fryderyk — throughout the book).
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