Dr. Alan Walker

Before settling in North America Dr. Alan Walker was on the staff of the Music Division of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London. He has broadcast for the BBC, for the CBC, and for CJRT – FM (Toronto), and gives regular public lectures on the music of the Romantic Era.  His thirteen published books include A Study in Musical Analysis, An Anatomy of Musical Criticism, and symposia on Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt.

Dr. Walker recently finished a three-volume, prize winning biography of Franz Liszt, a project which took him twenty-five years to complete and for which the President of Hungary bestowed on him the medal Pro Cultura Hungarica.

The biography also received the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize. Time Magazine hailed the biography as “a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival”. The Wall Street Journal called it “The definitive work to which all subsequent Liszt biographies will aspire.” The Washington Post selected it as a Book of the Year.

Two other books have meanwhile followed. The first is called “The Death of Franz Liszt”.  Based on eye-witness accounts, and the unpublished diary of a pupil, it tells the harrowing story of the last ten days of the composer’s life in Bayreuth.

Walker’s latest book, “Reflections on Liszt” is a sequel to the 3-volume biography, and deals with certain topics in greater depth than the biography itself could accommodate.  The book ends with “An Open Letter to Franz Liszt”, which the Times Literary Supplement called “an affectionate and stylized farewell from a biographer to a great subject.”

In January 2012, the Government of Hungary bestowed on Alan Walker one of its highest honours:  the Knight’s Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.

Alan Walker’s personal archives, containing many letters to and from musicians, may be consulted at the following websites:

http://library.lib.mcmaster.ca/archives/findaids/w.htm
http://www.artset.net/greatromantics.html