Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas


Book Description

Acclaimed pianist Robert Taub offers the insights of a passionate musician who performs all 32 of Beethoven's well-loved piano sonatas in concert worldwide bringing a fresh perspective on Beethoven as the ÊNew York TimesÊ put it. In this book he shares his intimate understanding of these works with listeners and players alike.




The Beethoven Obsession


Book Description

A fast-paced drama of frustration, envy, rivalry, struggle and success, this work tells the story of the intertwined lives of four people: Ludwig von Beethoven; a concert pianist who was a self-taught child prodigy; a fanatical inventor who disassembled pianos as a child; and a television cameraman who became a music entrepreneur in order to translate the music he loved into the first recording of Beethoven's music captured wholly on an Australian grand piano. This unorthodox and historic odyssey makes for an ideal read for anyone with an interest in classical music or the culture of Australia.




The Cambridge Companion to Chopin


Book Description

The Cambridge Companion to Chopin provides the enquiring music-lover with helpful insights into a musical style which recognises no contradiction between the accessible and the sophisticated, the popular and the significant. Twelve essays by leading Chopin scholars make up three parts. Part 1 discusses the sources of Chopin's style in the music of his predecessors and the social history of the period. Part 2 profiles the mature music, and Part 3 considers the afterlife of the music - its reception, its criticism and its compositional influence in the works of subsequent composers.




Beethoven Sonata No. 5 in C Minor


Book Description

Sonata no. 5 in c minor, opus 10 no. 1, URTEXT with Fingerings. For advanced students and professional pianists




The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries


Book Description

Compiled here are reviews, reports, notes, and essays found in German-language periodicals published between 1783 and 1830. The documents are translated into English with copious notes and annotations, an introductory essay, and indexes of names, subjects, and works. This volume contains a general section and documents on specific opus numbers up to opus 54, with musical examples redrawn from the original publications. ø The collection brings to light contemporary perceptions of Beethoven?s music, including matters such as audience, setting, facilities, orchestra, instruments, and performers as well as the relationship of Beethoven?s music to theoretical and critical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These documents, most of which appear in English for the first time, present a wide spectrum of insights into the perceptions that Beethoven?s contemporaries had of his monumental music.




Cello Practice, Cello Performance


Book Description

What does it mean to perform expressively on the cello? In Cello Practice, Cello Performance, professor Miranda Wilson teaches that effectiveness on the concert stage or in an audition reflects the intensity, efficiency, and organization of your practice. Far from being a mysterious gift randomly bestowed on a lucky few, successful cello performance is, in fact, a learnable skill that any player can master. Most other instructional works for cellists address techniques for each hand individually, as if their movements were independent. In Cello Practice, Cello Performance, Wilson demonstrates that the movements of the hands are vitally interdependent, supporting and empowering one another in any technical action. Original exercises in the fundamentals of cello playing include cross-lateral exercises, mindful breathing, and one of the most detailed discussions of intonation in the cello literature. Wilson translates this practice-room success to the concert hall through chapters on performance-focused practice, performance anxiety, and common interpretive challenges of cello playing. This book is a resource for all advanced cellists—college-bound high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and professional performers—and teaches them how to be their own best teachers.




32 Sonatas, Vol 2


Book Description

Re-engraved, corrected editions by Artur Schnabel, with Schnabel's notes and comments in five languages. Volume One contains Sonatas One through Seventeen and Volume Two contains Sonatas Eighteen through Thirty-Two.




Beethoven and the Construction of Genius


Book Description

In this provocative account Tia DeNora reconceptualizes the notion of genius by placing the life and career of Ludwig van Beethoven in its social context. She explores the changing musical world of late eighteenth-century Vienna and follows the activities of the small circle of aristocratic patrons who paved the way for the composer's success. DeNora reconstructs the development of Beethoven's reputation as she recreates Vienna's robust musical scene through contemporary accounts, letters, magazines, and myths—a colorful picture of changing times. She explores the ways Beethoven was seen by his contemporaries and the image crafted by his supporters. Comparing Beethoven to contemporary rivals now largely forgotten, DeNora reveals a figure musically innovative and complex, as well as a keen self-promoter who adroitly managed his own celebrity. DeNora contends that the recognition Beethoven received was as much a social achievement as it was the result of his personal gifts. In contemplating the political and social implications of culture, DeNora casts many aspects of Beethoven's biography in a new and different light, enriching our understanding of his success as a performer and composer.




Beethoven Forum


Book Description

The opening essay by James Webster, "Beethoven in Vienna, 1792-1802: Anø'Early' Period?", evaluates the critical tradition of dividing Beethoven?s career into three periods?early, middle, and late?and shows both their artificiality andøtheir implications, including a tendency to undervalue early works. J_rgen May?s essay "Beethoven and Prince Karl Lichnowsky," considers Beethoven?s relations with one of the first of his most important patrons. In "Beethoven before 1800: The Mozart Legacy," Lewis Lockwood examines Beethoven?s sketchbooks to describe how Beethoven composed with and against models from Mozart. Glenn Stanley's essay, "The 'wirklich gantz neue Mainer' and the Path to It: Beethoven's Variations for Piano, 1783-1802," surveys Beethoven?s sets of piano variations written in his first decade in Vienna and argues the importance of the variations in Beethoven's progress as a composer. In 'Pathos and the Pathätique," Elaine R. Sisman provides a historical and aesthetic analysis of one of Beethoven?s most popular piano sonatas. The composition of one of Beethoven's most popular violin sonatas, the "Spring" sonata is traced in the sketchbooks by Carl Schachter in "The Sketches of the Sonata for Piano and Violin, Op. 24." Nicholas Marston's "Stylistic Advance, Strategic Retreat: Beethoven's Sketches for the Finale,"øalso pays precise attention to Beethoven's sketches to discover how the composition of the Second Symphony illuminates Beethoven's work on an "underlying idea." In "Hybrid Themes: Toward a Refinement in the Classification of Classical Theme Types,"øWilliam E. Caplin defines "hybrid themes" and shows their variety in Beethoven?s early compositions. William Kinderman concludes the volume with a review article onøKlaus Kropfinger?s Wagner and Beethoven and its study of the "battle for Beethoven" that racked nineteenth-century European music.




Complete Piano Sonatas (1-17), Vol 1


Book Description

Re-engraved, corrected editions by Artur Schnabel, with Schnabel's notes and comments in five languages. Volume One contains Sonatas One through Seventeen and Volume Two contains Sonatas Eighteen through Thirty-Two.