Product Description

While the Beethoven string quartets are to chamber music what the plays of Shakespeare are to drama, even seasoned concertgoers will welcome guidance with these personal and sometimes enigmatic works. This collection offers Beethoven lovers both detailed notes on the listening experience of each quartet and a stimulating range of more general perspectives: Who has the quartets' audience been? How were the quartets performed before the era of sound recordings? What is the relationship between 'classical' and 'romantic' in the quartets? How was their reception affected by social and economic history? What sorts of interpretive decisions are made by performers today? The companion brings together a matchless group of Beethoven experts. Joseph Kerman is perhaps the world's most renowned Beethoven scholar. Robert Winter, an authority on sketches for the late quartets, has created interactive programs regarded as milestones in multimedia publishing. Maynard Solomon has written an acclaimed biography of Beethoven. Leon Botstein is the conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra as well as a distinguished social historian and college president. Robert Martin writes from his experience as cellist of the "Sequoia Quartet". And the book is anchored by the program notes of Michael Steinberg, who has served as Artistic Advisor of the San Francisco Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #169231 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Customer Reviews

Essential for Beethoven Lovers
This book should have been called simply "The Beethoven Companion." While it focues on the string quartets, it deals with many facets of the composer's life, and life in Vienna in general at the time. Detailed but never dull, thorough but never too technical, the book describes performance practice, takes you into the minds of interpretors, and deals with such fascinating philosophical considerations as Romanticism vs. Classicism, the meaning of the "last period," and audiences in Beethoven's time. I have many books on the Quartets, but I've never read another that is this valuable.

A helpful guide
This book is aimed at anyone interested in Beethoven and his music, of whom his quartets stand at the core. The late numbers benefit most from a friendly guiding hand which this book provide. The analysis of the individual string quartets get from quite short and sketchy for op 18 to lengthier chapters for the last numbers. Overall they are quite thorough and to the point. The introductory chapters put the quartets in the perspective of Beethoven's aesthetical development, the quartets' reception over the 19th century, and problems of performance. They are useful and clearly written. A historical discography clearly is missing. A future edition would benefit from comments on major landmarks of the quartets' interpretation on record (lets say from Rosé and Capet to the Alban Berg string quartet).