“What Beethoven wanted from pianos, as he wanted from everything, was more: more robust build, more fullness of sound, a bigger range of volume, a wider range of notes. As soon as new notes were added ...

As Beethoven's deafness grows his music undergoes a profound change. • Having faced the worst his demons can hurl at him, Beethoven resolves to go on as though nothing is wrong, and as an act of ...

Of the many gratifications found in Jan Swafford’s biography, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumphis to find the composer — his life, genius and unparalleled achievement — framed in terms familiar to us ...

Following Jan Swafford through the thousand-plus pages of his new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven is hardly as exhilarating as listening to the music of the peerless composer. But the stately rhythm ...

Can you remember when you first heard a piece of music by Beethoven? That last question I can certainly answer. I was 17, on a school trip to Vienna, and on the final night our teacher had secured ...

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Music lovers who are familiar with Jan Swafford’s earlier biographies of Brahms and Charles Ives will need no further incitement to read this mammoth but compelling biography of a composer arguably ...

Ludwig van Beethoven’s career was and still is boxed into early, middle, and late periods; the last three of his violin-and-piano sonatas, taken together, fairly race through those checkpoints. The ...