“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 ...

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) ...

Given the anvil-like solidity of this new Beethoven biography from Slate regular Jan Swafford, it’s clear that an attempt is being made to cleave a sizable space among the various works centered on ...

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 ...

In Diagnosing Genius, Ottawa psychiatrist and amateur pianist François Martin Mai proposes to examine the relationship between the creative genius of Ludwig van Beethoven and the various health ...

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 ...

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 ...

All that to say that Beethoven grew up and was shaped by the culture of the Enlightenment which was prevalent under Emperor Joseph II. Beethoven wasn’t born in Austria but he was a product of the ...