What Music!

September 1, 2023
A little-known piano builder had a great impact on Beethoven. Who hasn't heard of Ludwig van Beethoven? By contrast, far fewer know of Nannette Stein Streicher (1769-1833), the German piano builder and proprietor of a successful Viennese piano-construction enterprise and also Beethoven's lifelong "Beloved Friend." Well educated and musically gifted, Nannette became involved in her father's successful piano-building business from an early age. At 18, Nannette met Ludwig, 17, when he visited her home and played for her family. They became fast friends despite their differing personalities and backgrounds. When her father died, Nannette and a younger brother jointly took over her father's company, since the law forbade a woman to own a company outright. Upon her marriage, Nannette moved the company to Vienna and put her name on what would become the renowned "Nannette Stein Streicher in Vienna" pianos. By then, Ludwig was a celebrated composer-pianist. He required instruments that met his very exacting specifications, and Nannette produced them all. Throughout his life, he played on more than a dozen Streicher pianos, claiming he preferred them over others. This beautifully written, though lengthy, account rightfully brings a lesser-known historical personality to wider attention, but its appeal is somewhat limited. It will be appreciated mostly by adult Beethoven fans and older children, particularly piano students practicing Beethoven pieces. Gorgeous gouache and colored-pencil illustrations bring the detailed period artworks to radiant life. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Music lovers will rejoice over this worthy title. (author's note, bibliography, historical figures mentioned in this book, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-11)

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 1, 2023
Grades 2-4 *Starred Review* In language as strong and melodic as her subjects' music, Lawlor chronicles a lifelong friendship between two people as opposite in background and personality "as fast and slow, loud and soft, high and low." The middle child in a large, happy family, Nannette meets fellow pianist Ludwig when both are teenagers, and while he goes on to a "stupendous" career, she grows up to inherit her father's piano-making business and to design improvements that allow the instrument to meet the demands that "string-breaking virtuosos" place on it. Along with portraying the upright, confident-looking piano maker and disheveled "wild-man"" composer in elegant period dress and settings, Stadtlander depicts swirls of flowers bursting from pianos or lushly strung on musical staves to represent the glorious sounds that carried, and still carry, audiences away. In an afterword capped by rich lists of resources, the author points to a surviving trove of more than 60 notes Beethoven sent to Streicher (in just one year) as evidence of their continued closeness; he also rhapsodizes about the Ninth Symphony and adds an account of how two modern craftswomen recently built a replica Streicher instrument to highlight her continuing legacy. What a friendship!

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 16, 2023
Lawlor broadly reconstructs the friendship between composer Ludwig van Beethoven and barrier-breaking businesswoman Nannette Streicher (1769–1833), whose innovative piano design produced instruments capable of withstanding the most tempestuous playing. After meeting as children in her father’s piano shop, Streicher and Beethoven developed a connection despite being “as opposite as fast and slow, loud and soft, high and low.” That connection endured, with Beethoven describing Streicher as “ ‘Beloved Friend,’ the one person who inspired ‘an uncommonly good influence.’ ” Using metaphorical prose (both dreamed that the piano might become “capable of making music as perfect as a palmful of wild raspberries”), Lawlor focuses on the duo’s bond and the context around their professional achievements. Delicate details in Stadtlander’s gouache and colored pencil artwork invite close scrutiny of intricate historical scenes, while vibrant nature imagery conveys the excitement of the pair’s work. Background characters read as white. Thorough back matter includes an author’s note and bibliography. Ages 6–9.

November 1, 2023
Streicher and Beethoven met as teenagers when he visited her father, Johann Andreas Stein, "the celebrated piano innovator." Their friendship endured as Streicher would go on to create the unique pianos that showcased Beethoven's talents, instruments that were "as expressive as a human voice and as varied in tone and timbre as an entire orchestra combined." Like arrangers orchestrating a duet, Lawlor and Stadtlander (Fearless World Traveler, rev. 9/21) intertwine the two biographies, first by presenting a segment of one person's life, then the corresponding time period of the other's, and finally the intersection of the two. The chronological pieces, on such topics as childhood, early recognition of their respective talents, and continuing successes and failures, culminate in the initial performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and his "Ode to Joy," and the book concludes with each person's later experiences and their deaths. This pattern allows readers to compare and contrast the two lives, from Beethoven's difficult childhood with a sick mother and abusive father to Streicher's unique upbringing with a father who encouraged her formal education but also passed on the details of piano production (which allowed her, uncharacteristically for the times, to operate her own business). Stadtlander's gouache and pencil illustrations not only capture the era but also use setting to accentuate character traits; those segments featuring Streicher depict calm routines, while Beethoven's volatile performances show bright colors and objects visually exploding from his pianos. Appended with informative notes, a bibliography, and documentation. Betty Carter

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)