Category: Ludwig van Beethoven

Tempo is the pulse of music. Since 2018, Swiss pianist Bernhard Ruchti has been exploring and interpreting this pulse – and uncovering surprising new ways of interpreting classical music. His work is based on historical research into one of the most important interpreters of the 19th century: Franz Liszt. Ludwig van Beethoven’s great Hammerklavier Sonata Opus 106 is the focus of Bernhard Ruchti’s tour of Switzerland. He interprets it in the duration handed down by Franz Liszt himself: “presque une heure”.

A few years ago, the president of the Beethoven France Association, Dominique Prévot, shared with me an interesting archive: two letters written by Auguste de Gérando, a descendant of the Brunsvik family. Those who know even a passing familiarity with the story of Ludwig van Beethoven have probably heard of a woman to whom he wrote love letters in 1812 and whose identity remains mysterious, nicknamed the Immortal Beloved, as he calls her in his letters. While musicologists and researchers continue to try to solve this mystery today, we know that two potential candidates, Thérèse and Joséphine, were members of the Hungarian Brunsvik family who were close to Beethoven. The four brothers and sisters, Thérèse, Joséphine, Charlotte and François, spent long hours with him around the piano, whether taking lessons or sharing concerts with an audience of friends and family in Martonvásár Castle, located about thirty kilometers from Budapest. As I was preparing a trip to Budapest, Dominique Prévot told me about her meeting with Judith de Gérando, at the time the custodian of the family archives, very involved in Franco-Hungarian cultural life. This work would not have been possible without the support of many people whom I thank, in particular Félicie de Gérando, Dr. Judit Bajzáth of the Martonvásár Museum, and Stefanie Kuban of the Beethoven Archives of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

When summer comes, I travel on the roads of Europe in the footsteps of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt. This research period also allows me to exchange with other specialists. For example, in 2021, I was in contact with Robin Wallace, author of “Hearing Beethoven”. He had recommended that I contact Tom Beghin, whom he mentions in his book, to talk about one of my research topics: musicians with deafness and instruments vibrations. Beghin is a pianist and researcher specializing in historical pianos. In 2020, his article “Deafly Performing Beethoven’s Last Three Piano Sonatas”, highlighted the years of composition of the three sonatas and the stratagems borrowed by the composer to get the most out of his pianos. This article is about our encounter and my experience with Beethoven’s last piano, the Broadwood.

The pianist Pierre Réach is currently recording all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The first box set, which contains two CDs, is available from Anima Records. The second part was recorded in July. This new box set, scheduled for release at the end of 2022, will contain nine sonatas on three CDs. The next recording session is planned for early 2023. During this interview, we learn more about Pierre Réach’s passion for Beethoven, from his musical apprenticeship to recent recordings.

Régis Penet has always drawn with musical accompaniment. He listened to a lot of Beethoven, less now because Beethoven lends itself rather poorly to distracted or partial listening. The biography of Beethoven by Jean and Brigitte Massin and listening to the Pastorale and the Concerto l’Empereur were the starting points for his Beethoven project. On May 18, 2021, pianist George Lepauw and cartoonist Régis Penet shared a moment of music and drawing during an event organized by the publishing house La Boîte à Bulles in partnership with the Association Beethoven France, on the occasion of the release of Régis Penet’s album, “Beethoven, the price of freedom”. The ABF also had the chance to take part in the proofreading of the original project before publication, and in the creation of the Deezer playlist associated with the book. In October 2021, Régis Penet was interviewed by Diane Kolin.

The following article presents a mixture of musical history and analysis of musical excerpts. The passages oriented towards the interpreter, sometimes somewhat technical, are kept here in order to offer the possibility of testing the hypotheses put forward. The subject of the first metronomic indications has always been a long-standing enigma for artists and researchers. Conductors and musicians face the difficult task of interpreting the tempi of 19th century works, containing metronomic indications that appear incorrect based on our current standards.

At the time of Beethoven’s death, there was no public place in Germany honoring a composer. France had a statue of Gluck, and the United Kingdom a statue of Handel. Between Beethoven’s death and the unveiling of the statue representing him in 1845, Germany placed a plaque in honor of Haydn in Vienna, installed a bust of Bach in the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, and a sculpture from Mozart to Salzburg. Of all these tributes, none provoked as much controversy as that of Beethoven.

Approaching the piano on the stage of the Ranelagh Theatre on this night of December 2019, Pascal Amoyel admits that he doesn’t usually addresses the audience before a show but that this night was special: he would perform the Pathetique sonata for the 300th time. 300 different interpretations. A 300th time that projects him back to his Conservatory years where he was “formatted”: “Schubert is performed this way and Beethoven that way, don’t look elsewhere, we found for you”.

This video covers portraits of Ludwig van Beethoven. I used a new AI algorithm to animate the pictures. Link to the YouTube video if needed: https://youtu.be/Pfr1IhCqwgA Other videos Franz Liszt:…

Article in French. Abstract: Being an expatriate is not easy, being far from our country, our family, sometimes our language. But one language is universal, everybody understands it: music. When…