Search results for ""author john suchet""
Elliott & Thompson Limited Beethoven: The Man Revealed
The Sunday Times bestseller, revised and updated for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. ---- As heard throughout 2020 on Classic FM ---- You know the music... but do you know the man? ---- Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the world's best loved and most influential composers. His life - its dramas, conflicts, loves and losses - is played out in his music. ---- In this special edition to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth - with a new section featuring his most celebrated pieces - John Suchet shows us the man behind the music. He reveals a difficult and complex character, struggling to continue his profession as musician despite increasing deafness, alienating friends with unprovoked outbursts of anger one moment, overwhelming them with excessive kindness and generosity the next, living in a city in almost constant disarray because of war with France. ---- This is the real Beethoven, and Suchet brings him faithfully and vividly to life. ---- This updated edition of Suchet's acclaimed biography contains new material, including a detailed guide to Beethoven's most important compositions, family tree and timeline.
£9.99
Elliott & Thompson Limited Mozart: The Man Revealed
The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life is well known. Austrian-born to a tyrannical father who worked him - fiercely; unhappily married to a spendthrift woman; a child-like character ill at ease amid the aristocratic splendour of the Viennese court; a musical genius who died young thus depriving the world of future glories.Yet only that last point is really true. In this comprehensive biography, John Suchet examines the many myths and misunderstandings surrounding the world's best-loved composer. From his early days as a child prodigy performing for the imperial royal family in Vienna to the last months of his short life, driven to exhaustion by a punitive workload, one thing remained constant: his happy disposition.Through trials and tribulations, grand successes and disheartening setbacks, Suchet shows us the real Mozart - blessed with an abundance of talent yet sometimes struggling to earn a living. His mischievous nature and earthy sense of humour, his ease and confidence in his own incredible abilities; these were traits that never left him. His music has brought comfort to countless generations; his life, though brief, is no less fascinating.
£22.50
Elliott & Thompson Limited The Last Waltz: The Strauss Dynasty and Vienna
The Sunday Times bestsellerThe tale of two Waltz Kings: how the Strauss family took Europe by storm during the nineteenth century.The Strauss family name is forever intertwined with Vienna - as is their music. Two generations of this remarkable family transformed and popularised the waltz, delighting all of Viennese society with their prolific compositions. But behind the melody lay a darker discord, as the Strausses tore themselves apart while Vienna itself struggled to secure its place in a rapidly changing world.In The Last Waltz John Suchet skilfully portrays this gripping story, capturing the family dramas, the tensions, triumphs and disasters, all set against the turbulent backdrop of Austria in the nineteenth century, from revolution to regicide.Discover the truth behind Vienna's extraordinary musical dynasty.
£9.99
Elliott & Thompson Limited Verdi: The Man Revealed
Giuseppe Verdi remains the greatest operatic composer that Italy, the home of opera, has ever produced. Yet throughout his lifetime he claimed to detest composing and repeatedly rejected it. He was a landowner, a farmer, a politician and symbol of Italian independence; but his music tells a different story.; An obsessive perfectionist, Verdi drove collaborators to despair but his works were rightly lauded from the start as dazzling feats of composition and characterisation. From Rigoletto to Otello, La Traviatato to Aida, Verdi's canon encompassed the full range of human emotion. His private life was no less complex: he suffered great loss, and went out of his way to antagonise many erstwhile supporters, including his own family. An outspoken advocate of Italian independence and a sharp critic of the church, he was o en at odds with nineteenth-century society and paid the price.; In Verdi: The Man Revealed, John Suchet attempts to get under the skin of perhaps the most private composer who ever lived. Unpicking his protestations, his deliberate embellishments and disingenuous disavowals, Suchet reveals the contradictory and sometimes curmudgeonly character of this great artist, convicted throughout much of his life but ultimately unable to walk away from the art for which he will be forever known.
£22.50