Beethoven: Favourite Piano Sonatas

It is very difficult -- impossible, maybe -- to analyse music in any worthwhile way. If we knew how Beethoven and Mozart wrote such good music, we could write more of the same, and we can't. The recipe seems to involve a lot of very hard work as a child, however: practice does indeed make perfect as far as classical music goes. Beethoven's perfection came with difficulty: he hewed and hammered out his music where Mozart just seems to have let it flow from his quill, which is maybe why for me Beethoven represents power and passion and Mozart represents beauty. There's a lot of anger in Beethoven's music, sometimes frightening, sometimes enthralling, and it ...  Read the complete review

Beethoven's position in Western music is second to none. After nearly 200 years his music remains just as awesome, and his influence just as far reaching. His music contains an almighty power which seems to grab you by the throat and demand that you listen. Music that outlives the language in which it is couched is surely that of a true genius. Once the boyband phenomenon is dead nobody is going to point to Boyzone songs and say that they have a timeless quality, or transcend the idiom they belong to. But the power of Beethoven's imagination is such that it still speaks through his music, even though the Classical idiom is dead. His achievements and ...  Read the complete review