In the 1960s my mother put up with a lot of dreadful music. She bought me a trumpet and insisted I play it for an hour every day. She endured my wobbly scales, arpeggios and Al Hirt impersonations ...

For the last two years of his life, Beethoven's world was dark and silent. His health was completely shot. And his emotional state was worse. He'd failed in his relationship with his nephew Karl, and ...

Why should Beethoven’s string quartets have come to represent the pinnacle of achievement in western classical music? After all, this is a modest, intimate format involving just four players, better ...

Beethoven's three "Razumovsky" string quartets left both their first performers and the public shocked and suspicious. The violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose quartet premiered the Opus 59 works, ...

It’s the opening to the slow movement from Quartet No. 16, Opus 135, in which Beethoven wrote in the score, “Must It Be? -- It Must Be!” Each instrument enters one at a time to create a gorgeous ...

When we finally see the return of concerts, shared experiences by full audiences, everyone together, the moment will be less for fireworks than for thanksgiving. Let us begin, then, with Beethoven as ...

The Calidore String Quartet reflect on the importance of Beethoven's quartets in their lives Beethoven’s music has been an integral part of our quartet since the beginning. In our first reading ...

The greatness of Beethoven cast a long shadow. It was Brahms whose First Symphony was long delayed by the intensity with which the composer felt “the tramp of such a giant behind you”. And the shadow ...

Intense but unmissable: the East Neuk Festival comes of age with a marathon Saturday of Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartets.

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by Beethoven at 250 | Critic’s Notebook The Danish String Quartet presented the composer’s complete quartets over six extraordinary concerts at Alice ...

In the spring of 1825, when Beethoven was 54, he became terribly sick. He was in bed for a month and he wrote to his doctor, "I am not feeling well ... I am in great pain." The doctor put Beethoven on ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. "Grotesque", "monstrous", "chaotic", "madness"... When audiences ...