A short biography of the Polish composer and piano virtuoso, seasoned with nontechnical musical discussion. Entering a not overcrowded field, at least in English, Siepmann (director of music at Bruern Abbey) has here designed a compact ``life and works'' of the genius of the polonaise, mazurka, and waltz. Siepmann argues persuasively that Chopin's (181049) continued popularity has had the perverse effect of obscuring his known personalitythoughtful, mordantly witty, and not as representative of his era as one might imaginebehind a Hollywood- lit gauze of ``Romanticism.'' Unfortunately, even uncritical readers will balk at some sloppy historical analysis (``In 1825 Russia was the last bastion of old-fashioned stability in Europe, though even she was not immune to change'') and much prose in need of rewriting (``Sand's sexual appetite demanded some form of release, and it was during this period that she found solace between the sheets . . .''). If you can stand this sort of thing and are not afraid to accept Siepmann's discussion of Chopin's music for what it isone man's opinion, not gospelthis is a useful volume. The author is best when he lets the characters speak for themselves, which he does often. Siepmann also offers some interesting if not fully explored arguments, including a refutation of Bart¢k's canard that Chopin did not really concern himself with genuine folk music. Best of all, as appendices, are a selective discography of legendary Chopin performers from Vladimir de Pachmann (born in 1848, the year before Chopin died at age 39, but who lived well into the electrical recording era) to the magisterial Maurizio Pollini and the young Evgeny Kissin, as well as a fascinating round-table ``symposium'' on Chopin created from the author's interviews with nine leading contemporary concert pianists. If these features lead the Chopin novice to further exploration, Siepmann's literary smudges will merit forgiveness. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1995
ISBN: 1-55553-249-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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