For fans of the fortepiano, Ronald Brautigam needs no introduction. His exhaustive discography of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven never ceases to amaze with its delicate yet bold sound. This May and June, Mr. Brautigam undertook his first tour of China,

Ludwig van Beethoven may be one of the most famous composers in Western music history, but he’s also one of the most misunderstood. Over the past two centuries, a powerful mythology has grown around Beethoven: the image of a lonely,

In 1802, Beethoven (1770–1827) returned to Vienna from his stay in Heiligenstadt, where he’d been sent on doctor’s orders so he could learn to deal with both his increasing tinnitus and encroaching deafness. This is where he decided that suicide

Beethoven‘s symphonies – and recordings of his symphonies – are ubiquitous in the classical music world, so of course many musicians and music lovers have made lists of their favourites. Have you ever wondered if there’s a slightly more objective

The pianist Friedrich Gulda, born on 16 May 1930 in Vienna, studied under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx, and would in time become the highly esteemed teacher of Martha Argerich. Gulda would, arguably, also become the greatest Beethoven interpreter of

Everyone knows that Ludwig van Beethoven’s music is among the most popular and influential in classical music history. However, not everybody knows that we would have had many more works if he hadn’t spent years of his life trying to

Did you know that Ludwig van Beethoven composed 722 works, but only 138 of them carry opus numbers? Opus numbers are actually work numbers assigned by Beethoven’s publishers during his lifetime. The basic question is, why on earth did Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) may have written only nine symphonies (a pittance compared with Haydn’s 104 and Mozart’s 41), but in those nine works, he managed to thoroughly expand a form that might have become a bit too complacent. From