The Genius of Beethoven

Grapples with the living, breathing human being often lost behind the myth of the Romantic genius. Beethoven emerges as a man of contrasts and extremes — driven by love, anguish, fury and joy — qualities woven through both his life and his music.

In a new film from the director of award-winning and critically acclaimed trilogy In Search of Mozart, In Search of Beethoven & In Search of Haydn Phil Grabsky brings us the music and life story of one of the world's favourite composers, Fryderyk Chopin.

Howard Goodall traces the story of music from the ancient world to the modern day BBC2 has a late Christmas present for Goodall fans: six hours of him, charting the entire history of how the complex beast we now call music came to be. Every other modern presenter would fly around Europe at licence-payers’ expense to do links in lovely places — not Goodall. He stays in a sparse studio explaining why Pérotin, Guido of Arezzo and Dunstaple were great innovators and demonstrating triads on his keyboard. He thinks subject matter is more important than presentation. He’s right.

To celebrate Beethoven's 250th anniversary, Tom Service and the Aurora Orchestra present a unique evening in which conductor Nicholas Collon and the orchestra take apart Beethoven's popular Seventh Symphony and show us the inner workings of the composer's creative genius, followed by a performance of the work in the orchestra's signature style - from memory! Also on the bill at the Royal Albert Hall is a new work by British composer Richard Ayres, whose piece is inspired by Beethoven's struggle with his loss of hearing.