Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Suggest good biographies.

Suggest biographies that you consider to be excellent. They would of course be about composers and performers.

I myself am looking for good biographies about Mozart, Liszt, Beethoven and Chopin.

I'm a big fan of Glenn Plaskin's (himself a concert pianist) biography of Horowitz. It can get a little dry, talking ad infinitum about contracts and record labels, but the many fascinating anecdotes about Horowitz and those in his circle more thank make up for it.

A biased but interesting book is Speaking of Pianists by Abram Chasins. It's not a biography per se, but instead is an extended Op-Ed style work in the first person: he talks at length about the state of the classical music world when the book was published (1950s and then an addendum in the 1961 edition), aboutHofmann (who he reveres) and other 'golden age' pianists, as well as putting forth some commentary on a large portion of the standard repertoire (mostly concerti, but also mentions solo works) as well as the 20th century piano repertoire up to the publishing of the book (which he has considerable disdain for) that is fun to read. Pretty biased toward the old romantics, but it's an entertaining book all told. Midnight parties at Godowsky's penthouse are a highlight...

Nothing better than a biography OF Chopin BY Liszt.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ce...=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

I haven't read it yet, but for those of you with a Kindle, it's a free download!

Jeremy Siepmann's biographies are very good, and include a CD. I've read his biographies of Beethoven and Mozart, and thought they were great.

http://www.jeremysiepmann.com/?page_id=6

Benita Eisler wrote an excellent biography on Chopin titled Chopin's Funeral. It is a rather short book brimming with details about Chopin's social and romantic life, leading up to the time of his death.

'Horowitz His Life and Music' by Harold C. Schonberg.

Schonberg was senior music critic for the New York Times for many years. He observed Horowitz for over 50 years.

He also authored 'The Great Pianists' and other books.

Last (partial) sentence of the book: "....that is why he was the dominant force in piano playing for the last half of the twentieth century."

Bech

The huge, three-volume bio of Liszt by Alan Walker is very good.

King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and his Era by Edward A Berlin. I bought the Kindle version for $9.99. The book seems to be well researched and makes for an interesting read.

Also for anyone with a webbrowser.

Sounds interesting in theory, but I found it virtually unreadable because of the flowery style and sentences several times the length found in ordinary writing. I'm not sure if Liszt actually wrote it either... I recall reading it was written by a female friend of Liszt(unless I'm confusing it with another book).

The best bio of Chopin I've read is Chopin in Paris.

Well, yes, you've already shown that. I mentioned it for people who don't like to read (too much) online. The Kindle is easy on the eyes and can be read in broad daylight.

I couldn't get through the book, and it seems to have vanished from my library. According to Harold Schonberg:

In 1852 Liszt brought out a biography of Chopin, probably written in whole (and most certainly in part) by his mistress, the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein

I have little reason to doubt this (backed up by what I have read elsewhere), and have less reason to doubt that the Princess was not a very likeable, or intelligent, woman.

"The Great Pianists" by Harold Schonberg (as has already been mentiooned) is a fantastic read. Also, "Mozart: His Life and Times" by Peggy Woodford is an excellent book. Then of course, there's Franz Mohr's book, "My Life with the Great Pianists".