Over the course of listening to Beethoven’s early and middle period string quartets, music lovers have the privilege of hearing a brilliant young composer step into the tradition of Haydn and Mozart – then begin to innovate beyond it. Written

Beethoven is often thought of as a piano god who descended from on high to write some of the most memorable piano music ever written. However, Beethoven was very human, and the pianists around him shaped him in important ways.

By 1816, Beethoven, always hungry to innovate, was pressing against the compositional conventions that he himself had helped cement. By this point, he was also completely deaf. This isolation reshaped him; he communicated through notebooks, withdrew from the concert life

Beethoven’s violin teachers never turned him into a virtuoso; that was never their job. His calling card was always his dynamic pianism, not his violin playing. But his relationship with the instrument didn’t keep him from writing some of the

Beethoven’s middle period piano sonatas consist of the sonatas from Op. 31 through Op. 90, twelve piano works composed between 1801 and 1814. This is Beethoven at his most recognisable, writing iconic sonatas like the Waldstein, the Appassionata, and the

Born in Odessa on 19 October 1916, Emil Gilels was universally admired for his superb technical control and polished tone. His extensive discography, according to Bryce Morrison, “details his development from early impulsiveness and heaven-storming bravura to readings that are

Over his career, Beethoven wrote thirty-two piano sonatas. The first fifteen – covering Op. 2 through Op. 28 – were composed between 1795 and 1801, a time known as his early period. These early period sonatas tell a story. His

Beethoven’s violin sonatas and concerto exist because of men he alternately charmed and infuriated. One was dedicated to a man he called incomprehensible and never played. Another had an illness and physical limitations reflected in the sonata Beethoven wrote for