Mannes Sounds Festival 2018: Alan Walker Lecture on Fryderyk Chopin
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Ernst C. Stiefel Concert Hall, Arnhold Hall, 4th floor
55 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011
Mannes Sounds Festival 2018: Alan Walker Lecture on Fryderyk Chopin

Alan Walker discusses his new biography of the Polish composer, which will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in September 2018.

Based on ten years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker’s monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker’s work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin. Fryderyk Chopin is an intimate look into a dramatic life; of particular focus are Chopin’s childhood and youth in Poland, which are brought into line with the latest scholarly findings, and Chopin’s romantic life with George Sand, with whom he lived for nine years.

Comprehensive and engaging, and written in highly readable prose, the biography wears its scholarship lightly: this is a book suited as much for the professional pianist as it is for the casual music lover. Just as he did in his definitive biography of Liszt, Walker illuminates Chopin and his music with unprecedented clarity in this magisterial biography, bringing to life one of the nineteenth century’s most confounding, beloved, and legendary artists.

Since 1999, Mannes has presented a yearlong music festival every year. Each festival includes more than 20 events performed by the school’s gifted young student artists, distinguished faculty members, and renowned guests, at prestigious New York City concert venues and cultural institutions. The festivals are an outstanding component of the total Mannes program.