Ken Russell

Beethoven Confidential started life as a play that was developed into a screenplay for a film starring Jodie Foster and Glenda Jackson, with Anthony Hopkins as the deaf musical genius Ludwig von Beethoven. It tells the story of the rivalry between two would-be biographers in the quest for the so-called "Immortal Beloved"—Beethoven's secret love. Personal friends of Beethoven, the biographers become pitted against each other in a race to reveal the mysterious lover. The film was never made but the mystery is solved in this novel about the great composer. It is a story that Ken Russell considers to be one of the most bizarre and compelling detective yarns of all time. Johannes Brahms was renowned for his three B's—beer, beard, and belly. Tradition has it that Brahms died a confirmed bachelor and a respected pillar of society who liked nothing better than a pint in the evening and a walk through the Black Forest at weekends. But what of his sex life? According to Ken Russell, "Brahms probably knew more about sex than any composer before or since." The evidence is in the music: for sheer sensuality try the inner movements of his Third Symphony, or the opening of his First Symphony ("tell me if that doesn't have balls") or a section in the Fourth that can only be described as "the sex act set to music." But the composer’s early life tells us more. Born in the red-light district of Hamburg, Brahms spent his formative years playing piano in city brothels. Brahms Gets Laid investigates his close association with insane genius Robert Schumann and his even closer relationship with the psychologically disturbed Clara Schumann and her daughters.

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