Ludwig van Beethoven Essentials

Ludwig van Beethoven was a musical genius whose music is touched by profound emotional intensity and intellectual depth. The German composer revolutionised the piano sonata, took the string quartet into previously unknown realms, and changed the symphony forever. All this while going increasingly deaf: many of Beethoven’s greatest, late works were written in, at best, a frustrating aural fog—at worst, complete silence. With his “Eroica” Symphony, Beethoven single-handedly broadened symphonic music with a masterpiece of epic narrative scope and harmonic and textural experimentation. And with the Fifth Symphony he introduced music’s most single famous motif—an ominous, dramatic four-note utterance that ultimately drives the work to its blazing conclusion. The Ninth is an epic existential journey with a choral finale that celebrates brotherhood in music of exuberant energy. The piano sonatas, meanwhile, represent the very peak of their genre, while the late string quartets almost defy categorisation with their beauty, anguish and frustrated brilliance. Explore the best of Beethoven, performed here by current stars and legendary interpreters of classical music’s colossus.