Capucon beethoven biography

Maurizio Pollini. See more Best classical music. Ludwig van Beethoven Biography. Beethoven features. Download 'Fidelio - Overture' on iTunes. Preview Track Preview. Download 'Piano Concerto No. Download 'Piano Sonata No. Download 'Symphony No. Most shared Beethoven capucon beethoven biographies. First page Prev. Let me say that I am a mix of all that, with a tendency to Central Europe!

It is funny, you know. You can hear anything you want when you feel up to it. There is the internet with its numerous sound tracks, films and clips, YouTube, you name it. Before, you had to go to concerts, but now? A mouse click and you are there. I am categorically not saying that it is the same as attending a life concert, far from it, but today there are those huge multimedia and database resources.

Long ago you could only hear and see Oistrakh when he came to Europe. It is said that a teacher may hamper students to develop their own artistic individuality. Is there some truth in it? If not, you will copy. It is as simple as that. Veda was very clever, she never imposed anything. For instance, when I was studying a sonata or concerto she would always write two different fingerings, saying to me to try this and try that, and check which one is better for your hand.

This is absolutely logical to me, but I can tell you that a teacher it is not always like this. It came to my mind that especially the Beethoven has been most frequently recorded. Would Beethoven have adored it? I feel so much in peace with this work, like with the Mendelssohn. For the Brahms I still need time; maybe I will do it two or three years from now.

Yannick and I had the same ideas and feelings about the Beethoven. I like Yannick a lot and we have the same vision on music. For instance, we are crazy about the young and the old Carlo Maria Giulini, we are big fans of his conducting, his very sincere, integer approach to music. We knew already that our music making, in the Beethoven especially, would be criticised.

As if to exist today you have to do something totally original. I mentioned one my own few favourites, Perlman, with Giulini conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, to me one of the great recordings of a century. Instead, we let it go, When I played it with Daniel Harding two weeks later I played it differently, the tempi were different. I work with many conductors and I can be compatible.

I do not impose anything. When I would have felt incompatible I would have told Yannick that he was too slow or too fast. Listen to all those Beethoven cycles and how different the approach to this great music can be. It changes in the course of time. How would I play the concerto ten years from now? Rather hesitantly I mentioned to him that artistic integrity should be the first objective.

This would be a much better course to follow than to rely on what critics are writing, no to say that they can be awfully wrong in their judgement! This is what Yannick and I discussed before. At one time you can please this or that critic, you get the sticker, but at the same you displease the other one. Or next time it is the other way around.

The problem with critics sometimes is that they are victims of current fashion, or — if they are really influential — they might try to dictate it. Some have the power to do that. Today it should be like this, tomorrow like that. But musical performance is not a kind of snapshot. Well, maybe for them but not for me. When I play this Concerto or any work for that matter, it is entirely me, my personality, my fingerprint.

There are dozens of top rated performances of the Beethoven Concerto. Yannick and I knew this, of course, as we would record one of the most recorded pieces. How to tackle it? There are only two ways: either we are frightened and put it aside for twenty years, or we do it in a most natural way. There is really nothing more there but to present our own version.

I remarked that he combined the Beethoven with the Korngold Concerto. For whatever reason the Korngold has become very popular — not to say fashionable — nowadays among violinists and audiences. We had rather recent recordings from Znaider and Trusler, and they are pretty good. There is no marketing, no commercial plan in this combination.

I played both concertos many times and I felt ready to record them. The good thing with Virgin Classics is that they do not capucon beethoven biography me to record certain works. The next big concerto will most probably be the Goldmark. The Brahms Double Concerto I played a lot, I think at least a hundred times, with my brother Gautier the cellist — click here for my interview with him - AvdWand after a while we felt we could record it.

We have decided to stop playing it together for the next two or three years. I gathered that I must be a very stressful life, including those journeys all over the world, from one hotel room to the other, albeit it is not particularly backpacking or living in a suitcase. It must be quite comfortable, with good eating, drinking and sleeping in five star hotels, but nevertheless.

I want to know what is happening all around the world, I need to be connected with my time. Then I had my own musical festival in France for the last fifteen years, which is going to stop this year. It was great but very time consuming, with a lot of planning in advance. I started with it when I was eighteen and I loved it ever since because you can simply do what you want, with no one telling you what you have to do or not.

Besides, there is nothing more beautiful than to invite your own friends! Another beauty of it was that I did not have to pay anybody, they came and they went as good friends. Honestly, sometimes it looked crazy to invite artists like Maxim Vengerov or Daniel Barenboim and they get nothing, but they all came, they wanted to be with us.

I have great memories of all that, even though we had to practice a lot. It was not just in his orchestral music that Beethoven repeatedly broke new ground. The 32 piano sonatas, which he wrote in bursts throughout his career, experiment with form in all directions, using the full expressive range of an instrument that was itself changing rapidly, growing louder and with an ever greater range of notes.

Despite this constant revolution, increasingly integrated melodic material holds the sonatas together. Their harmonic language lies at the outer reaches of their time. Their melodies are in a state of constant transformation — form and content are now inextricably linked.

Capucon beethoven biography

The Grosse Fuge, op. Neither side compromises and order is taken to the brink of chaos. Few contemporary listeners could comprehend music like this. Yet in his lifetime Beethoven was widely recognised as a genius. Although he resented the servitude that was the usual lot of musicians, his father included, he could not afford to be a total rebel.

But instead of being his masters, the princes, countesses and archdukes who funded his career were his music pupils and very often his friends. From onwards, Beethoven was able to function as an independent artist, a mark of the value placed upon him by those with influence. He was given an annual financial grant by a group of his wealthy associates and patrons, on the condition that he remained in Vienna.

In his maturity, he produced works in every genre that opened up new horizons and have remained at the heart of the repertoire. His single opera, Fidelio, dates from the heady days of revolutionary idealism, but its cry for freedom has echoed through the centuries. The Missa Solemnis continues to beguile listeners with its curious mixture of celestial and Earthly music, while the Ninth Symphony, with its audacious introduction of voices, remains the supreme work with which to commemorate and dedicate great events.

Life never became easy for Beethoven.