What Music!: The Fifty-Year Friendship Between Beethoven and Nannette Streicher, Who Built His Pianos
by Laurie Lawlor; illus. by Becca Stadtlander
Primary, Intermediate    Holiday    40 pp.
10/23    9780823451432    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780823457397    $11.99

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.

From the November/December 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.