Decades of research have been poured into every musical and instrumental aspect of the “Historically Informed Performance” (HIP) of classical music: From the way the continuo bands of the time ...

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 ...

This year marks the 250th birthday of one of the most revered composers who ever lived: Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770. Beethoven wrote hundreds of piano sonatas, ...

The French record label Naïve has released a new Beethoven Symphony cycle as a single 5-CD unit, forgoing individual releases of the symphonies, which have typically come out two to a disc, with the ...

It seems fitting that Beethoven composed his First Symphony at the dawn of a new century, 1799-1800, for even contemporaries realized that his symphonies changed the conception of the genre. Beethoven ...

In 1943, Bela Bartok’s finances were a wreck and his health was failing fast due to complications from leukemia. And yet the ailing composer still had one, final masterpiece to create. Thanks to a ...

The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) and Music Director Gianandrea Noseda will release Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 2 & 7 on December 1, 2023, available for pre-order on November 17. The release is the ...

Watch a full orchestral performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (1st movement) from BBC NOW.

My opinion may be little better than the layman's, but I believe it is incorrect to consider Beethoven's cycle of nine symphonies the 'bedrock of western music." It is not. The bedrock of western ...

The former British Prime Minister James Callaghan was asked late in his long life whether there was anything he regretted not achieving. He replied that he wished he could have written Beethoven’s ...

Beethoven, the wild-haired German composer, is ubiquitous during the fall symphony season. It makes sense, as his booming, blustery compositions have a lot in common with the darkening, windy autumn ...