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 personal element in music then becomes an event in the Bagatelles op. 126, written in 1823–24. In this cosmos of “small things”, the music resembles diary entries. We experience Beethoven as capable of being equally and utterly outside of himself as deeply turned inward, and in this late work his music reaches moments of an intimacy without boundaries.

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.