The True Beethoven

According to his student Carl Czerny the true Beethoven could only be heard in his improvisations. What did those sound like?

We will be exploring different types of improvisation from Beethoven’s time, like the free fantasy, prelude, capriccio, romance, Kreutzer violin sonata (!) and of course variations on a Mozart aria.

The romance is based on a fragment from one of his many sketchbooks: the audience gets to decide what the perhaps never finished piece should sound like!

We are also ‘recreating’ the premiere of the Kreutzersonate, which was originally to be dedicated to George Bridgetower, who improvised in the Kreutzersonate, in such a way that Beethoven leapt of his piano stool and hugged him (allegedly)! What might he have done?

Finally, we take a step into the area of true novelty, improvising a fantasy with the three of us based on ideas from the audience: a free ensemble fantasia has (to our knowledge) never been described in that time.
We have been doing a lot of research into Beethoven’s improvisation approaches this year. Find out more here: