Beethoven Dialogue

The year 2027 marks the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s death – an opportunity to newly encounter his music!

The programme follows the idea of tracing the roots of Beethoven’s music and following its unique energy, through two utterly different works by the master, all the way into the present day.

“Nicht Bach! Meer sollte er heißen” (“He should be called the Sea and not a river”) - with these words, Beethoven expresses his admiration for the Thomaskantor of Leipzig while at the same time pointing to the immense wealth of inspiration he drew from Bach’s music. Bach’s Toccata in E minor opens the programme with a work in which the very act of beginning is itself composed – a work shaped to a great extent by Bach’s own improvisation. The Prelude and Fugue in E major from the second book of the “Well-Tempered Clavier” lead us into a seemingly spiritual inner world, out of which Beethoven’s Bagatelles Op. 126 emerge. Within this cosmos of ‘trifles,’ the music resembles diary entries. We experience a Beethoven who can, with the very same immediacy, be utterly beside himself or deeply introspective, and in this late work, his music reaches moments of boundless surrender.

In dialogue with Beethoven’s music, and particularly with his “Waldstein Sonata”, Ward De Jonghe’s Five Aphorisms come into being. A young composer of our own time embarks on the adventure of reflecting on the music of his celebrated predecessor and responding to it in a voice of his own.

This music of the future flows into the great narrative of the Sonata in C major op. 53, dedicated to Graf Ferdinand von Waldstein, a passionate patron of the young composer. Beethoven celebrates the very act of music coming into being, unfolds its full hymnic power, and leaves us feeling as though we have been born anew.