John Suchets – Beethoven the Man revealed!

“You were born knowing Beethoven,” the words spoken by John Suchet at the Royal Northern College of Music on his talk on the life of Beethoven. The year long celebration of the composer Beethoven is a special focus for the college during this academic year. Students from Archbishop Beck were at the Royal Northern College as part of cultural enrichment. Rachel a Year 12 student said, “I found the morning to be informative, in-depth but very enjoyable”.

Megan also from Year 12 was taken by the phase “to understand the music, you must firstly understand the person. “John Suchet’s lecture really gave me a realistic image of how Beethoven behaved, his composing style and the people who surrounded him.”

Students from Archbishop Beck Catholic College were at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester as part the College’s cultural enrichment programme.

Beethoven – The Man Revealed

It is perhaps more true of Beethoven than any other composer that if you know what is going on in his life, you listen to his music through different ears. Ludwig van Beethoven’s life – its dramas, conflicts, loves and losses, his deafness coupled with continuous health problems, his epic struggle with his sister-in-law for sole custody of her son, his nephew – is all played out in his music. Now John Suchet has portrayed the real man behind the music in this compelling biography of a musical genius.

He reveals a difficult and complex character, struggling to continue his profession as musician despite increasing deafness; alienating friends with unprovoked outbursts of anger one moment, overwhelming them with excessive kindness and generosity the next whilst living in a city in almost constant disarray because of war with France. This is not the god-like immortal portrayed in statues and paintings in heroic pose garlanded with laurel leaves. Beethoven may have been one of the greatest artists who ever lived, but he was still a man who had to live among fellow mortals, eat and drink, fall in love and pay his rent. This is the real Beethoven, and Suchet brings him effortlessly to life in his book, “Beethoven the Man revealed”.

John Suchet presents Classic FM’s flagship morning programme and is recognised as a leading authority on the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).