“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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

War and inner turmoil are at the heart of Beethoven's works. • He finishes work on the most imperiously commanding of his piano concertos – the Emperor – in 1809, just as the walls of Vienna are ...

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 ...

As Beethoven set about composing his Third Symphony, his hearing was failing and he felt certain his life was about to get worse. That it was born in a moment of despair may help explain why the ...

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is calling its cycle of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, which Gustavo Dudamel began Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, “Immortal Beethoven.” That may not be an ...