Review of Chopin’s Polish Letters tr. David Frick

Abstract

At a time when Chopin’s correspondence is beginning to recover from years of critical neglect, David Frick’s new English translation of all Chopin’s extant Polish letters is superlative in two main respects. First, it represents the most comprehensive collection of these letters to date in any language. Letters 1–80 (pre-October 1831) derive from the Warsaw University critical edition of Chopin’s correspondence, the obvious authoritative source for any translation, but as only the first volume of that edition had appeared when the translation was undertaken,1 the remainder of the letters (81–286) have been taken from Bronisław Edward Sydow’s obsolescent edition of the correspondence2 and supplemented by Krystyna Kobylańska’s 2010 edition of Chopin’s correspondence with George Sand and with her children.3 Apart from the specific problems stemming from Sydow, which I consider below, the value of this English translation is compromised by its inability to follow any single critical edition.