Beethoven on Period Instruments

L.V. Beethoven
Coriolan Overture, Op 62
Symphony No 4 in B-flat major, Op 60
32 Variations in C minor, WoO 80
Choral Fantasy, Op 80

 
Ludwig van Beethoven was an innovator–a composer who reinvented practices of the day, startling and surprising his contemporaries. To hear his music performed on instruments and techniques of his own time, even his most familiar music undergoes a sort of sonic re-wilding. It’s Beethoven the way his contemporaries would have heard it–surprising and thrilling. That’s what Laurence Equilbey, Insula orchestra and accentus hope to achieve in this fascinating concert: getting the brilliant Fourth Symphony to sparkle and making the Coriolan overture dangerous. Then they join Yuan Sheng, a specialist performer on a 19th-century piano from a museum in Shenzhen, to play the joyous Choral Fantasy. This is Beethoven coming back and moving forward: it’s as close as we can get to hearing him play.