Roll on, Beethoven
WHEN Beethoven met his hero, Mozart, in Vienna in 1787, the latter reportedly said: ‘Watch out for that boy. One day he will give the world something to talk about.’ This year will see a celebratory calendar of events that dwarfs anything devoted to any other composer in our lifetime; even then, it will be impossible to showcase little more than his fabled oeuvre—in 45 active years, he wrote more than 650 works.
The German federal government declared the legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven to be of utmost importance to the nation, pledging
€ 30 million towards the 250th-anniversary celebrations of his birth, in December 1770 in Bonn. The city where he spent his first 21 years has celebrated him with an annual Beethovenfest since 1845—this year’s Beethoven 250 will be a 365-day event. In seven years’ time, Vienna is set
