Chopin's Piano

The captivating story of Frédéric Chopin and the fate of both his Mallorquin piano and musical Romanticism from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

During the winter of November 1838, Frédéric Chopin sailed to Majorca, where he lived with his lover, George Sand. Upon arrival he acquired a small piano and brought it with him to a monastery in the mountains. There, in frail health, but inspired by the beauty of his surroundings and the solace of his relationship with Sand, he began to compose his revolutionary preludes.

In this scintillating work of narrative nonfiction, composer and pianist Paul Kildea follows the musician and his instrument through history, tracing and interpreting the origin and success of Chopin's famous preludes and the piano's journey from Majorca in the early nineteenth century to Nazi-occupied Paris in the 1940s. Along the way Kildea brilliantly describes how keyboards are crafted, how music boxes are...