Composer of the Week: Beethoven: To Live Life Alone

Beethoven comes to realise that his failing hearing might never improve. It's a turning point that will reverberate through the rest of his life and which Beethoven immortalised in an extraordinary letter to his brothers and to posterity. All this week, Donald Macleod traces Beethoven's story through the momentous years of 1802 and 1803. It was a time that saw remarkable developments in Beethoven's creativity as he pursued a self-declared new path for his music. He undertook his most ambitious works yet, pouring his whole self into his art. At the same time his personal life was reaching a crisis point that would plunge him to the darkest depths of despair and threaten to ruin all his carefully laid plans for the future. Composer of the Week is returning to the story of Beethoven's life and music throughout 2020. Part of Radio 3's Beethoven Unleashed season marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. Composer of the Week is returning to the story of Beethoven's life and music throughout 2020. Part of Radio 3's Beethoven Unleashed season marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. Piano Sonata No 17, Op 31 No 2, The Tempest, III. - Allegretto Khatia Buniatishvili (piano). Missa Solemnis: Kyrie - Julia Vardy (soprano), Iris Vermillion (mezzo-soprano), Vinson Cole (tenor), René Pape (bass), Berlin Radio Choir, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Georg Solti (conductor). Symphony No 2, Movts III & IV - BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Thierry Fischer (conductor). Violin Sonata in A major Op 47, Kreutzer, II. Larghetto - Veronika Eberle (violin), Oliver Schnyder (piano). Variations in Eb Op 35 Eroica, final movt - Emanuel Ax (piano)