All About Beethoven 2016

We begin the series with a multimedia lecture by Susan Waterfall, with images by Mina Cohen and audio samples produced by Julian Pollack. This is an unusual opportunity to gain an overview of Beethoven’s life and music, which will enrich your experience at any of the subsequent Beethoven concerts. You will learn about Beethoven’s family, friends, patrons, fellow musicians, Napoleon, the Viennese cultural milieu, and the ongoing controversy about the immortal beloved.

You will be rewarded for your concentration, mental effort and daring willingness to take in the life and music of Beethoven in a single lecture! Great quantities of schlag, the Viennese version of whipped cream, will be offered with coffee during intermission.

The Peregrine Quartet will conclude the afternoon with a performance of the Holy Song of Thanks from Opus 132.

A Beethoven Tribute (five-part series)

“From the heart … to the heart”
Join Susan Waterfall and an array of exceptional Festival musicians for five days of lectures and narrated concerts exploring the life and music of Beethoven, the most influential and consistently popular composer in Western music. Beethoven became the defining archetype of the artist and left us with a body of work unsurpassed in its capacity to exalt, reveal and heal the human condition.

Susan Waterfall’s production of the Beethoven Tribute series is generously sponsored by Thomas Safran.

“Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” – Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet

Explore the Series