“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 ...

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 ...

The author lets the music do the talking in this pithy new biography, which uses the composer’s works to shed new light on his life A book about the most famous composer in the western canon, a “dead ...

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 ...

Darkness to Light. Where: 12 Miles West Theatre Company, 33 Green Village Road, Madison. When: Through June 8. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. How much: $26. Call (973) ...

Countless biographies of one of the world's most recognized classical music composers, Ludwig van Beethoven, already exist. Why British journalist, radio host and admitted Beethoven obsessive John ...

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 ...