Chopin’s death in Paris, his funeral service in the Madeleine Church, and the comparative indifference that his music endured before it finally entered the Pantheon, are among the topics of Alan Walker’s latest lecture – one of an ongoing series recorded in George Brown House, Toronto.

We have come a long way since the German critic Ludwig Rellstab described Chopin’s music as “a cacophony of sounds” containing “ear-splitting discords”; a long way since James Davison, the critic of the London Times, dismissed Chopin as “a maker of sickly melodies”. We have arrived at a point where Arthur Rubinstein’s observation has for a majority of us become true: “Whenever we hear Chopin’s music it is like coming home.” Alan Walker pays special attention to the role that was played by Chopin’s sister Ludwika and his lifelong friend Julian Fontana in preserving the composer’s unpublished manuscripts, and bringing out more than twenty piano compositions in a posthumous edition, which are now part of the standard repertoire.

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