Composer of the Week: Beethoven: Making a Man (1770-1792)

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Migrated podcast image for: Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Kate Molleson

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Beethoven Unleashed: Making a Man (1770-1792): A passion for piano

Beethoven Unleashed red and blue stripes

A passion for piano

Beethoven Unleashed: Making a Man (1770-1792)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Beethoven Unleashed: Making a Man (1770-1792), A passion for piano

Donald Macleod explores the beginnings of a lifelong love affair with the keyboard.

Donald Macleod investigates how Beethoven's love affair with the keyboard began, leading to a lifetime exploring its expressive possibilities.

Donald Macleod investigates how Beethoven’s lifelong love affair with the keyboard began, and his determination to stretch the expressive possibilities of piano music that sometimes tested his instruments to destruction. 

This week, Donald Macleod’s focus is on Beethoven’s childhood and teenage years, as he looks for clues in the composer’s early life that point towards the great man he would become.

All through 2020, Donald Macleod takes an unprecedented deep dive into the compelling story and extraordinary music of Ludwig van Beethoven. In this uniquely ambitious series, told across 125 episodes of Composer of the Week, Donald puts us inside Beethoven’s world and explores his hopes, struggles and perseverance in all the colourful detail this amazing narrative deserves. Alongside this in-depth biography, Donald will also be meeting and talking to Beethoven enthusiasts and experts from across the world to discover how his music continues to speak to us in the twenty-first century. Through story and sound, the series builds into a vivid new portrait of this composer, born 250 years ago this year, who made art that changed how people saw themselves and understood the world.

Piano Sonata No 19, Op 49 No 1 (2nd movement)
Khatia Buniatishvili, piano

Piano Trio, WoO 38  (arr. Alec Frank-Gemmill)
Stephanie Gonley, violin
Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn
Pavel Kolesnikov, piano

Der Mann von Wort, Op 99 
Benjamin Appl, baritone
Graham Johnson, piano

24 Variations on "Venni Amore" by Righini, WoO 65
Alfred Brendel, piano

Piano Trio, Op 70 No 2 (3rd and 4th movements)
Atos Trio


Produced by Chris Taylor for BBC Wales

Composer of the Week: Beethoven Unleashed: Making a Man (1770-1792)

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod looks at Beethoven's humble beginnings as the child of a court musician.

This week, Donald Macleod's focus is on Beethoven's childhood and teenage years, as he looks for clues in the composer's early life that point towards the great man he would become.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Composer of the Week

Beethoven Unleashed: Making a Man (1770-1792)

A passion for piano

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3