Seen and Done

We went to the RFH for Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and Ninth Symphony (the London Philharmonic with Danny Driver on piano). What a programme – a whole evening of the greatest music ever written, with none of those attempts to make you work for your reward by listening to something more avant garde.

I’m always impressed and even moved by the way Beethoven, whose life was not great by then (unwell, personal life in ruins, short of money and cruellest of all for a dedicated musician, stone deaf) did not give us a lament or a dirge as his last symphonic word. Instead he summoned up the same optimism and faith in humanity he had put into the Third, and left us all a last great shout of joy.