Episode 47 – Withdrawal from the World

John reveals how Beethoven’s nephew, over whom the composer waged a five year court case to gain custody from the boy’s mother, begins to dominate — and blight — Beethoven’s final years. Karl had chosen a career that was not music, and - against Beethoven’s wishes - was continuing to see his mother. John explains how the music he was composing at the time, in particular one of his Late Quartets, reflected his mood. He plays a movement that John describes as “his profoundest expression of the pain of deafness, of isolation, of almost total withdrawal from the world” as Beethoven faces a health crisis he is sure is going to kill him, before playing the extraordinary movement that he wrote when he recovered. In this most dramatic period of Beethoven’s life, John also reveals why the composer turned down an invitation to perform his Symphony No.9 for the London Philharmonic Society, and explains how his increasingly-hostile nephew is hatching a plan that would remove his uncle from his life for good. All the Beethoven pieces featured in this podcast are taken from the 90-disc Naxos box set, the Complete Beethoven Edition. You can buy yours by heading to Presto Classical and Europadisc.