Roadmap to Beethoven

Are you curious about this time lapse of music history? It is about Beethoven’s music, to be more precise: his music as a result of the tumultuous development from the Baroque to the Classical period. In a matter of a few decades, composers succeeded in steering music to an entirely different and new direction. The focus was no longer on light music for the nobility at court, but on the expectations of the general, bourgeois concert culture. The symphony was invented, the orchestras grew in size, the instruments were more manifold and the concert halls became much larger.

This musical evolution can now be experienced in the form of a concert: The local baroque orchestra “Festa d'Orecchi” uses five examples to illustrate the path of orchestra music from the German Baroque to the Classical period. The 25 musicians play orchestra pieces by Georg Philipp Telemann, the Bach sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, and Joseph Haydn (“Fire Symphony”) on the historical instruments of the time (Baroque oboe, natural horn, Baroque flute, etc.). The concert concludes with a performance of Music for a Ballet on Horseback (Musik zu einem Ritterballett), composed by the young 20-year-old Beethoven for the Bonn Carnival in 1790/1791.

The concert will be presented by Norbert Alich from the Pantheon Theatre in Bonn. Listeners will embark on an entertaining and exciting musical journey through time.  

The evening will be rounded off with an open air dinner on the Venus terrace of the Drachenburg Castle, where guests can enjoy the sunset with a butler-style buffet and matching wines.