If we look at proportions, there is one that is very easy to observe in Beethoven’s output: for every symphony, he left us approximately two quartets and four sonatas. During his early years in Vienna, Beethoven turned his Piano Sonatas into his calling card as a virtuoso: he composed around twenty in barely seven years, while his six String Quartets, op. 18 paved the way for his first two symphonies. In his middle period, the pace of sonata writing slows as his most famous symphonies take centre stage (from the Eroica to the Eighth), and the three genres coexist in a state of balance. In his final years, the symphony becomes a singular event (the Ninth), while the sonatas disappear after op. 111 as Beethoven turns obsessively to the string quartet as his purest form of expression.

As part of the complete Beethoven symphony cycle conducted by Daniele Gatti, Professor Carlos Calderón presents a series of 6 lectures, featuring a wealth of audio and multimedia examples, inviting us to enter what we have called the Beethoven Laboratory. We will step inside this “workshop”, where the piano serves as the experimental foundation in the personal sphere; the quartet becomes a design space for a circle of friends; and the symphony, an act of proclamation before the public. At the end of his life, when he no longer had anything to proclaim because his deafness was almost total, nor anything to share because his social isolation was nearly absolute, he stopped turning to the piano and the orchestra and was left with the quartet alone: four voices that were, in reality, debating in his mind the limits of beauty and of his own musical laboratory.

Subscribe to the 6 lectures for €125