Product Description

This is part of a series of musical biographies, written and presented by broadcaster Jeremy Siepmann with Bob Peck as Beethoven. In this four-CD set, the life and music of the revolutionary composer/pianist is unveiled in considerable detail with many musical examples.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #460728 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03
• Released on: 2001-03-13
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From AudioFile
This superb documentary features an unpretentious, well-written, intelligent narrative; excerpts from the composer's own correspondence and other contemporary documents; and liberal, lengthy quotations of Beethoven's music. Most popular accounts, fiction and nonfiction, of Beethoven's life either sentimentalize or demonize the man and milk all the pity they can from the tragedy of his deafness. Here, however, we receive the most balanced and humane account of his personality that this reviewer has encountered outside scholarly circles. The author, a noted British musicologist, delivers his own copy with informality and warmth, and five worthy actors handle the excerpts. Best of all, Naxos has chosen music recordings that highlight the tempestuous romanticism that most notably informed Beethoven's groundbreaking works and personal gestalt. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
Though long resident in England, Jeremy Siepmann was born and formally educated in the United States. Despite a late start, he was encouraged by both Rudolf Serkin and Virgil Thomson to pursue a career in music. He studied in New York and later in London where he began teaching for the WEA and later for London University. For most of the last 20 years he has confined his teaching activity to the piano. As a writer he has contributed articles, reviews and interviews to numerous journals and reference works (including New Statesman, Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), some of them being reprinted in book form (Oxford University Press, Robson Books). His books include a widely acclaimed biography of Chopin (The Reluctant Romantic, Gollancz, July '95), two volumes on the history and literature of the piano, and a biography of Brahms (Everyman/EMI, 1997). In December 1997 he was appointed editor of Piano magazine. His career as a broadcaster began in New York in 1963 with an East Coast radio series on the life and work of Mozart, described by Alistair Cooke as 'the best music program on American radio'. On the strength of this, improbably, he was hired by the BBC as a humorist, in which capacity he furnished weekly satirical items on various aspects of American life. After a long break he returned to broadcasting in 1977. Since 1979 he has devised, written and presented more than 1,000 programmes for BBC radio including the international-award-winning series 'The Elements of Music'. In 1988 he was appointed Head of Music at the BBC World Service, broadcasting to an estimated audience of 135 million. He left the Corporation in Spring 1994 to form his own independent production company.