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Max Richter has written a new piece which pays homage to Beethoven with the release of its world premiere recording on the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.<\/p>\n
Beethoven – Opus 2020 <\/em>is a new orchestral work was commissioned by the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, which will host the world premiere performance on the eve of the anniversary.<\/p>\n Max Richter’s new work will be available on all digital streaming platforms from 17 December, the day on which Beethoven was born. Its world premiere performance is scheduled to take place at the Beethoven-Haus on 16 December and will be streamed live on Deutsche Grammophon\u2019s Facebook page. Andante Loops,<\/em> a piece for solo piano derived by Richter from his Opus 2020<\/em> score, will meanwhile receive its premiere on 11 December in Apple Music\u2019s Beethoven Room. The two works will be paired together on a digital EP, available from 18 December.<\/p>\n Beethoven \u2013 Opus 2020<\/em> embodies Max Richter\u2019s creative dialogue with the music of Beethoven. It also embraces the spirit of an earlier tribute piece, Karlheinz Stockhausen\u2019s Opus 1970, made to mark Beethoven\u2019s bicentenary fifty years ago. Recorded in November at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn by pianist Elisabeth Brau\u00df, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn and conductor Dirk Kaftan, Beethoven \u2013 Opus 2020<\/em> captures the multi-layered strands of Richter\u2019s score. The 18-minute work includes fragments of Beethoven\u2019s music treated as overlapping sound collages. \u201cWhen I started thinking about Opus 2020, I decided to bring some elements of Beethoven\u2019s and Stockhausen\u2019s practice into the present in new ways,\u201d recalls Richter. \u201cThis intertextuality is typical of my work; whatever else a piece might be about, it is also, at some level, about other music.\u201d<\/p>\n Stockhausen\u2019s Opus 1970<\/em> reworks ideas from his earlier Kurzwellen for shortwave radios. The piece imagines that the radio sets, replaced in Opus 1970<\/em> by tape recorders, are all tuned to programmes playing Beethoven, over and around which Stockhausen reads excerpts from the heart-breaking Heiligenstadt Testament,<\/em> the document written by Beethoven in 1802 as he was struggling to come to terms with progressive hearing loss. His sense of isolation and despair are eloquently expressed in its text, with a spark of hope evident in his decision to live on for the sake of his art, despite the toll life was then taking on him.<\/p>\n Max Richter set out to compose an orchestral work that treated Beethoven fragments like \u201ctape loops\u201d, but played by instrumentalists rather than on machines. Opus 2020<\/em> grew from that initial thought. \u201cIn order to realise this idea I have had to rethink how the orchestra works, and it has resulted in a very challenging, though seemingly simple score,\u201d he comments.<\/p>\n Composing Opus 2020<\/em> involved integrating and overlapping fragments of different lengths and tempos and transforming the orchestra, usually governed by hierarchies of instruments, into what Richter calls a \u201cdemocratic community\u201d of ensembles. \u201cA kind of ideal orchestral society emerges from this, embedding Beethoven\u2019s humanistic vision in the process,\u201d he observes. \u201cThe orchestral hierarchy is flattened out in favour of a democratic space. Echoing Beethoven\u2019s vision, I too believe passionately in the elevating effect of creative works on individuals and society.\u201d<\/p>\n Max Richter explains Beethoven-Opus 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Max Richter has written a new piece which pays homage to Beethoven with the release of its world premiere recording on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"sls_format":[],"class_list":["post-28406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"deck":"","is_featured":false,"media_type":"standard","audio_embed":"","video_url":""},"yoast_head":"\n