A Beethoven year draws to a close, and Vlad dives into the stirring sound-world of this most enigmatic composer. Although his repertoire figures quite late on Vox Nostra’s musical calendar, HIP performances of Beethoven’s music by experienced fortepianists on historical instruments bring us ever closer to the way in which Beethoven may have conceived and heard his compositions. On the subject of hearing Beethoven, Vlad takes a moment to explore a most unique recording with fortepianist Tom Beghin: ‘Inside the Hearing Machine’. The title refers to the ‘Gehörmaschine’, a contraption which Beethoven’s colleague André Stein built in 1820 to go on top of the composer’s Broadwood piano, and Beghin – a researcher-performer at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium – invites us into the ‘multisensory playground’ that is Beethoven’s Hearing Machine.
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 13th December, 7am-10am