Though the modern listener may never know it, Beethoven composed after Haydn and Mozart, but not after Wagner and Brahms. Acknowledged as the reformer of the sonata form as used in the symphony, ...

The Beethoven Symphony Series 1: The Nine Symphonies article by C. Michael Bailey, published on October 23, 2005 at All About Jazz. Find more Bailey's Bundles articles ...

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 ...

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is calling its cycle of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, which Gustavo Dudamel began Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, “Immortal Beethoven.” That may not be an ...

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, listeners will hear the complete Beethoven symphonies as recorded live by Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The recordings, still in progress as ...

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 ...

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 ...

On the program: Beethoven, Symphony No. 8; Symphony No. 9 ("Choral"). Justin Brown, conductor. Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano; Margaret Jane Wray, mezzo-soprano; Jay ...

The Beethoven 9 as we explore the world of Beethoven through the lens of his symphonies with renowned classical biographer Jan Swafford. Each month is dedicated to a different symphony. Each week ...

When Ludwig von Beethoven left us in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony ...

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 ...

Why do Beethoven's symphonies remain so appealing? It's a question we put to Simon Rattle a few years ago after he had finished conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in all nine of them. "There's nothing ...