Last night Flick and I took advantage of cheap Monday tix at the Nova to watch "In Search of Beethoven". Two and a half hours of sublime music and an epic saga of an extraordinary talent, a supreme confidence, and suffering ameliorated by a terse, agonising hope. The hope of happiness.
One of the loveliest things was the way Garbralsky weaved interviews from pianists, composers, historians, conductors. With an handheld camera mostly. There is the Beethoven worshipper, a owlish man who bounces on his feet in enthusiasm and affection. There is the respectful historian, who circulates around to the truth, to talk about Beethoven with diplomacy, forgiving his temper tantrums, his neurosis, his recusiveness. There are the pianists, who talk of Beethoven with a honest affection, as of an intimate friend. Commenting on his freakish fingering; the impossibility of his piano sonatas. The conductors, who speak with a mixture of jocularity and admiration for the genius that is Beethoven. The radical nature of his compositions, breaking all convention. The sheer arrogance of the 26 year old to write such music, to be so confident of his talent.
And the self-consciousness of Beethoven. His frequent desires to suicide, his ability to hold onto life, to keep writing, all the music in his head. His disorganisation, his lack of hygiene in the latter years, and yet, despite appearances, the very orderliness and control in his music. It's a common misapprehension that Beethoven's passion was barely contained, his intensity and temper wild and unpredicable. Perhaps it was so with his social life, and yet his music was deeply controlled, organised, intelligently wrought.
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