Publisher's Synopsis
This book is on Beethoven and his thirty-two piano sonatas; this is artistry from the "inside looking out." Biss commits himself over nine years to record the piano concertos and in explaining his commitment attributes his maturity as a pianist to the musical coaching of Leon Fleischer and the influence of Arthur Schnabel. In the process, he contrasts the artist's role in live concerts to the lonely isolation of the recording studio facing the microphone. He defines Beethoven as the major force in German music; his influence - his weight - on Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, even Schoenberg. He is always "in the room," always "a voice in the conversation." He confronts the genius of Beethoven "the fierce independence, the architectural asymmetry, with enormous works resisting any resolution until the final movements, the harmonic boldness, which precipitates the slow collapse of the tonal system; the grit."
