Paul Kildea Libri

Benjamin Britten was Britain's greatest twentieth-century composer--and in the eyes of many, the greatest since Purcell (a figure who often inspired him) three hundred years earlier. Britten broke decisively with the romantic, nationalist school of figures such as Parry, Elgar and Vaughan Williams and recreated English music in a fresh, modern, European form. With Peter Grimes (1945) and Billy Budd (1951) he arguably composed the last operas--from any composer in any country--which have entered both the popular consciousness and the musical canon. He did all this while carrying two disadvantages to worldly success--his passionately held pacifism, which made him very suspect to the authorities in the years during and immediately after the Second World War--and his homosexuality, specifically his forty-year relationship with Peter Pears, for whom many of his greatest operatic roles and vocal works were created. One of the strengths of Kildea's book is the way it traces the development of this relationship and portrays their life together. For Britten, that life was increasingly lived in and around Aldeburgh, whose atmosphere and personalities form another wonderful dimension to the book. Kildea shows clearly how Britten made this creative community, notably with the foundation of the Aldeburgh Festival and the building of Snape Maltings, but also how costly the determination that this required was in terms of his friendships and the lives of some of those around him. Above all, this book helps us understand the relationship of Britten's music to his life, and takes us as far into his creative process as we are ever likely to go. Kildea reads dozens of Britten's works with enormous intelligence and sensitivity, and always in a way which those without formal musical training can understand. It is one of the most moving and enjoyable biographies of a creative artist of any kind to have appeared for years [Publisher description]

The narrative explores the journey of Frédéric Chopin's twenty-four Preludes, focusing on the instruments used, notable pianists, and the traditions they embody. Central to the story is Chopin's Mallorquin pianino, saved by Wanda Landowska, which gained significant cultural importance during World War II as the Nazis sought to claim Chopin's legacy. Through rich prose and detailed storytelling, Paul Kildea delves into the transmission and interpretation of art, offering insights into the complexities of musical Romanticism and its appropriation over time.

'Beguiling ... Limpidly written, effortlessly learned' William Boyd, TLS, Books of the Year In November 1838 Frederic Chopin, George Sand and her two children sailed to Majorca to escape the Parisian winter. They settled in an abandoned monastery at Valldemossa in the mountains above Palma, where Chopin finished what would eventually be recognised as one of the great and revolutionary works of musical Romanticism - his 24 Preludes. There was scarcely a decent piano on the island (these were still early days in the evolution of the modern instrument), so Chopin worked on a small pianino made by a local craftsman, which remained in their monastic cell for seventy years after he and Sand had left. This brilliant and unclassifiable book traces the history of Chopin's 24 Preludes through the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them and the traditions they came to represent. Yet it begins and ends with the Majorcan pianino, which during the Second World War assumed an astonishing cultural potency as it became, for the Nazis, a symbol of the man and music they were determined to appropriate as their own. The unexpected hero of the second part of the book is the great keyboard player and musical thinker Wanda Landowska, who rescued the pianino from Valldemossa in 1913, and who would later become one of the most influential musical figures of the twentieth century. Kildea shows how her story - a compelling account based for the first time on her private papers - resonates with Chopin's, while simultaneously distilling part of the cultural and political history of Europe and the United States in the central decades of the century. Kildea's beautifully interwoven narratives, part cultural history and part detective story, take us on an unexpected journey through musical Romanticism and allow us to reflect freshly on the changing meaning of music over time.