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 ...

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 ...

“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 ...

T his new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) begins by taking us to the scene of his funeral. We ascend the stairs of the Schwarzspanierhaus, just outside the city walls of Vienna, and ...

On Dec. 16, while the classical music world is honoring Beethoven’s 250th birthday, the international community of scholars devoted to his music will also be honoring another round-numbered occasion: ...

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 ...

Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly a true genius, but he had a extremely complex and difficult personality. Amazingly, he also lost his hearing fairly early in his career. Both of these unfortunate ...

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 ...

What do you know about Beethoven? He wrote the Fifth Symphony (da da da dummmm ...) and he became deaf. There's obviously a lot more to the man and his music, and one person who surely knows is ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by Critic’s Notebook Ruth Padel tells the great composer’s life story, more profoundly than most biographies, in “Beethoven Variations.” By Anthony ...