

John Suchet's Beethoven Playlist
Especially for RPS Members, we asked Classic FM presenter John Suchet to share a playlist of gems from a composer close to his heart, around the publication of his latest book, In Search of Beethoven: A Personal Journey. Lovingly handcrafted just for you, John has selected eight of his favourite Beethoven works and brought each of them to life in his own words.
Do you know which work first featured Beethoven’s Eroica theme, or that one of his masterpieces initially featured a piano improvisation? Put the kettle on, turn up John’s Spotify playlist and read his fascinating insights into Beethoven’s world.
Variations and Fugue in E flat major for piano ‘Eroica Variations’
One melody obsessed Beethoven in his mid-twenties. He used it first in a country dance, then as the finale of his ballet Prometheus. In the village of Heiligenstadt, coming to terms with his deafness, he used it as the main theme of set of piano variations. But instead of the standard Theme and Variations, he wrote Variations and a Theme. From now on he would do things his way. On completing the piece, he wrote his Will, confronting and thereby overcoming his deafness. That theme would find its greatest flowering in his first major composition on returning to Vienna, the Eroica Symphony.
Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major ‘Hammerklavier’
The longest, most complex, most intense and intimate, of all his 35 piano sonatas (yes 35). He composed it in the middle of the long, drawn-out and draining court case he brought against his sister-in-law over the custody of her son, his nephew. He composed practically nothing else for a five-year period. The arrival of the gift of a Broadwood piano from London, with its heavier action than the Viennese instrument, inspired him. The slow movement takes us deep into his soul and we share his anguish. Just before publication he added the opening two notes of the slow movement, which are like pillars on which the whole movement stands.
Triple Concerto in C major
Beethoven wrote a Triple Concerto for violin, piano and cello with full orchestra? I did not know that until I came across a recording by chance. What a find! He wrote it for the best of reasons: to flatter the performers. The piano part was for his young pupil, the teenage Archduke Rudolf, and is showy but not too demanding. The violin part plays to the strength of the soloist. But the real star is the cellist. Nikolaus Kraft was known for his technical mastery and clear rich tone, and so the Triple Concerto is as near to a cello concerto as Beethoven ever wrote. It was also the last piece he performed in public before retiring from the concert platform because of his deafness.
Choral Fantasia
Unfairly neglected because it is seen as the inferior forerunner of the mighty Choral Symphony — the theme of the final movement pre-echoes the famous Ode to Joy theme. It demands huge forces — solo piano, full orchestra and chorus, as well as six solo voices (always reduced to four). It opens with a piano improvisation, which Beethoven had not written down before the first performance. The orchestra had no idea when to come in. Piano and orchestra slowly pulled apart and the piece came off the rails. Not often performed because of the huge number of musicians it requires, it deserves its place in the sun. If it is a forerunner of the Choral Symphony, it is all the better for it.
String Quartet in B flat major
The Late Quartets, which come in the final years of Beethoven’s life, stand alone as his greatest, most intense and deeply personal body of work. In them he bares his soul to us. The slow movement of Opus 130, which he incongruously labels ‘Cavatina’, he wrote through tears. A friend said nothing he had ever composed brought him so much pain. He had won that draining court case, and was now learning what it was like to be a single parent. He would drive his nephew to attempt suicide. In the middle section of the Cavatina, the first violin ‘weeps’. This is Beethoven talking to us, trying to justify what he has done, pleading with us to understand and forgive.
Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major
The piano was Beethoven’s voice. In this piano sonata, the middle of the final set of three, he tells about his deafness, and how he has overcome it. He writes above the slow movement ‘klagender gesang’ (song of lament). It is one of the most doleful of all his melodies. It is his deafness. After repeating it, he sounds a defiant chord, which he repeats no fewer than nine times, crescendo, then launches into a life-affirming double inverted fugue. ‘I have overcome my deafness. If I can overcome the musician’s worst fate, you can overcome whatever life throws at you.’
Muzik zu einem Ritterballet (Music for a Knight’s Ballet)
A real curiosity. The teenage Beethoven’s first great patron in Bonn, Count Waldstein, asked him to compose a pageant to celebrate knights of the Teutonic Order. Beethoven put together several movements with titles like ‘War Song’, ‘Drinking Song’, ‘Song of Romance’, ‘Hunting Song’, all linked by a ‘German air’. Waldstein asked Beethoven if he could publish it under his own name. The teenager agreed. It was not until the early 20th century that musicologists established that it was a youthful work by Beethoven. Beethoven’s gratitude to Waldstein for his patronage was to dedicate Piano Sonata No. 21 to him, the Waldstein Sonata.
Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II
As a 19-year-old, Beethoven was commissioned to compose two cantatas, one on the death of the emperor, one on the elevation of his successor. They were the first full orchestral works he composed. So complex was the music that the prince-elector’s orchestra in Bonn refused to play them, and so Beethoven never heard his first orchestral compositions performed in his lifetime. A soprano aria in the Death Cantata contains solo oboe which soars above the orchestra, exactly as it will do in the dungeon scene of Fidelio many years later.
In Search of Beethoven: A Personal Journey by John Suchet (Elliott & Thompson) is out now in hardback, ebook and audio.