Leading up to the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven in 2020, musicians and listeners worldwide will be celebrating the creative genius whose music is fully ingrained in our musical consciousness. With festivals and performances going on around the globe, the University of Tennessee School of Music has created their own umbrella for Beethoven performances—Beethoven250.
Two UT School of Music faculty members, violinist Miroslav Hristov and pianist Chih-Long Hu, have embarked on their own Beethoven journey, a three-recital jaunt in the month of February through the ten Violin Sonatas of Beethoven. The pair has now completed two of the three recitals, with the final one taking place next Monday, February 25, covering No. 8, No. 9 (“Kreutzer”), and No. 10. The recitals take place in the Sandra G. Powell Recital Hall in the Haslam Music Center at 8 PM.
Listeners for all three recitals will come away with an awareness of Beethoven’s stylistic evolution over the five years from 1798-1803 that constitute the first nine sonatas, then a leap ahead of nine years until the composition of the No. 10 in G Major, Opus 96. If you’ve missed the first two recitals, be sure to catch the final one if for no other reason than the presence of the “Kreutzer” sonata, inarguably the most emotionally engrossing and technically challenging of the ten.
