Nadia Singer – Beethoven: his life, his music

Nadia Singer recounts Beethoven’s life through the composer's letters and numerous quotations about him. Quotations from Liszt, Chopin, Czerny, Grillparzer, Bettine Brentano and Goethe. In this way, she uncovers the man behind the composer of the millennium and highlights the vast gulf between Beethoven’s musical genius and his wretched, day-to-day existence, which came to an end at the age of fifty-six, marked by a long illness. She plays piano music by the young Ludwig van Beethoven, which still sounds as though it might have been composed by Mozart or Haydn, but also the sonatas that point towards the future, such as the 'Appassionata' and the 'Moonlight Sonata'.