Perhaps somewhere along the way you’ve heard the story of Beethoven’s deafness. From the age of 30, the already hugely accomplished composer began going slowly deaf, until by the age of 45 he was ...

In 1801, at the age of 30, Ludwig van Beethoven complained about his diminishing hearing: “From a distance I do not hear the high notes of the instruments and the singers’ voices.” Harvard professor ...

There is a new fashion among intellectual pianists. I call it the “pianissimo fetishism.” It works as follows: the intellectual pianist wants to distinguish himself from crowd-pleasing virtuosos and ...

Whether Beethoven saved his best symphony for last is a matter of opinion. However, one can hang several descriptors on his Symphony No. 9, and “anticlimactic” isn’t one of them. If you’re performing ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by Critic’s Notebook Ruth Padel tells the great composer’s life story, more profoundly than most biographies, in “Beethoven Variations.” By Anthony ...