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Beethoven's Shadow
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
The American pianist Jonathan Biss is known to audiences throughout the world for his artistry, musical intelligence and deeply felt interpretations. What is less known until now is that Jonathan Biss writes about music in a most compelling and engaging way. For anyone who has ever enjoyed a Beethoven concert or a Beethoven recording or one of the many films about Beethoven, this audiobook is an inspiring listening experience. For those of you who have heard Beethoven in concert or listened to a Beethoven recording, Jonathan Biss takes you behind the scenes of those performances. If your musical interests are much broader than Beethoven or if your interests focus on the creative process , this will fully engage you.
“On April 24th, 2007, Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 109 made me lose my mind.” So Jonathan Biss opens this book. He goes on to describe the complex and by no means all positive impact of the technology of the recording process on the experience of performing and listening to music. He also describes the legacy of generations of teachers. You are there when Leon Fleisher teaches Jonathan Biss just as Artur Schnabel taught Leon Fleisher before him. You experience the growth of a talented young musician as he becomes a fully mature artist. Most compelling of all, Jonathan Biss creates an almost spiritual introduction to the making and experiencing of music. He has, in effect, invited the reader into the world of the composer and the performer.
Jonathan Biss includes an annotated audio guide to deepen the experience of anyone who enjoys listening to classical music.
It is an unforgettable experience.
Jonathan Biss has recently begun a nine year project of recording all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.
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Renowned pianist Jonathan Biss performs from a place within himself where skill, mind, and heart thrive in perfect synchronicity. A dedicated fan of the masters, Biss has undertaken the recording of Beethoven’s full suite of piano sonatas. A natural teacher, Biss is capable of describing beautifully what music is meant to do to player and to audience. In Beethoven’s Shadow Biss describes his love of and voyage into the world of music, and focuses especially on his ghost-mentor, Beethoven. His explanation of Beethoven’s mission and divine successes resound with love. Biss cares about what the composers he loves meant to achieve with each piece. To play is to honor. Narrator Jeff Woodman’s warm voice celebrates this sincere work.
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The medical clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) left the world a wealth of clairvoyant readings on everything from health and spirituality to psychology and past lives. Now the most significant teacher of Cayce's teachings, Mark Thurston, updates and revises his classic book, Discovering Your Soul's Purpose, to help you use the Cayce teachings in the 21st century to find greater purpose in your relationships, career, and overall mission in life.
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"Cayce colored Parachute"
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The religious turn to their faith to find meaning. But what about the many people who lead secular lives and are also hungry for meaning? What guides, what approaches are available to them? Distinguished philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly explain that a secular life charged with meaning is indeed within reach.
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Excellent Book that refreshes the classics
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Before it was a religion, a culture, or even a system of meditation, what was Buddhism? On Buddhism Without Beliefs, celebrated teacher, translator, and former Buddhist monk Stephen Batchelor takes us back to the first years after the Buddha's awakening to reveal the root insights of Buddhism hidden beneath centuries of history and interpretation.
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Disingenuous.
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In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.
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A Rich Experience
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Walking in This World picks up where Julia Cameron's best-selling book on the creative process, The Artist's Way, left off to present readers with a second course, part two in an amazing journey toward discovering our human potential. Full of valuable new strategies and techniques for breaking through difficult creative ground, this is the "intermediate level" of the Artist's Way program.
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I wish there was a zero star rating
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Write Songs Right Now is a hands-on, step-by-step guide to creating original pop songs - an approach that been road-tested by thousands of Alex's students and coaching clients in New York City, some of whom have gone on to achieve great success. With insight, enthusiasm, and humor, Alex guides listeners through the process of brainstorming for ideas, crafting effective lyrics, and putting those lyrics to music.
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The Possibility Principle
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How would you like to experience your life? It's an intriguing question, and yet we've been conditioned to believe our life visions and goals are often unattainable - until now. With The Possibility Principle, psychotherapist Mel Schwartz offers a revolutionary approach to living the life we choose. Though science has vastly expanded our knowledge, it has also led us to adopt a worldview where we see ourselves as insignificant specks living in a mechanical universe.
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Interesting enough to listen twice
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Living an Examined Life
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How do you define “growing up?” Does it mean you achieve certain cultural benchmarks - a steady income, paying taxes, marriage, and children? Or does it mean leaving behind the expectations of others and growing into the person you were meant to be? Here acclaimed author James Hollis guides you through 21 areas for self-inquiry and growth - such as how to exorcise the ghosts of your past, when to choose meaning over happiness, how to construct a mature spirituality, and how to seize permission to be who you really are.
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Extraordinary compilation of Dr. Hollis' works
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Where the Heart Beats
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Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself - and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. "Remarkably researched, exquisitely written", Where the Heart Beats weaves together "a great many threads of cultural history" (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s.
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Mind Expansion
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What listeners say about Beethoven's Shadow
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Argpolymath
- 07-22-16
Required material for musicians!
I've never seen a more detailed and logical description of the rewards and challenges of musical performance.
If you want substance and not just a collection of anecdotes, this is the book for you.
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4 people found this helpful
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- George H. Mitchell
- 03-15-22
Who doesn't like Beethoven
with that I await the rebuttal. This piece is very insightful into a performer's training and issues that arise from the mechanical focus. Very interesting.
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- David Keppel
- 08-05-20
Of greatest value to performers
As a lover of Beethoven, I found Biss's own obvious devotion to Beethoven to be moving. Professional musicians will find it most useful, since he is discussing the choices of a performer rather than simply analyzing Beethoven's music. It leaves me with a very high opinion of the sincerity and devotion of Jonathan Biss to Beethoven, and I will look for his CDs of the Beethoven cycle.
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5 people found this helpful
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- wbiro
- 12-16-17
Interesting Inside Account of a Pianist
A book of elation, really, perhaps bordering on boasting, but who can contain the joy of a successful life as a pianist? I didn't hold any boasting against him. The book covered what it felt like to receive lineage lessons to being in demand to making recordings of the full catalog of Beethoven's Sonata's, so it is a nice slice of such a lucky life and curious mindframe, irrepressibly shared here.
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- Cooke Harvey
- 10-09-15
inside Performance
What a wonderful, insightful story on the need to express through music, with all its considerations; passion, precedence and perfection among others. Jonathan Biss is an amazing musician and scholar focused on Beethoven and his piano sonatas. (he offers a class from Curtis on Coursera on this subject). He reveals his story using history and anecdotes with compelling thoughts from his teacher and teacher's teacher . Great insights for all musicians and lovers of the muse. iThe reading is fine but having heard Mr. Biss speak I really wished it was he that delivered his story.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Book Lover
- 01-05-21
Riveting
This book had my full attention beginning to end! Well paced, knowledgeable, and instructive. Heartfelt.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Carole
- 02-03-22
Good not great
I like that this audiobook is inspiring to go beyond the polished, perfect forms of art and go deeper into the dynamics of the experience. And yet overall this audiobook missed an opportunity to appeal to a wider audience by incorporating parts of the musical pieces in with the narration. Parts of this were boring.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-30-21
Recommended reading for muso"s.
I am a pianist who studied Beethoven and played many of these sonatas so I can relate to this book. His observations are so interesting and I like his playing and his work. I look forward to a full book along these lines.
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- Dennis J Gallagher
- 10-02-20
A Serious Musician
Jonathan Biss goes as far as humanly possible to describe a musician's relationship to music in terms accessible to non-musicians.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Lauren Lynley
- 09-10-21
Biss Fully Grasps Beethoven’s Spirit
I was fortunate enough to take on online Curtis Conservatory course on the Beethoven Sonatas as he was recording them and it opened up so much in terms of understanding and enjoying Beethoven, especially the sonatas. This audio offering, Beethoven’s Shadow is a primer for his multi-semester course and a pleasurable refresher for me. The orator does a very good job though it would have been nice to hear Jonathan’s voice read his material. I highly recommend this Audible offering for any music-lover. I recommend listening to one or more of the sonatas after digesting this material; it truly does make a difference in tangible and delightful ways.
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1 person found this helpful