HAMMERKLAVIER

I had this dream. My dead father comes back to see me.
“So,” I say, “how is it? Have you met Beethoven?”
He scowls and shakes his head in sorrow and disgust:
“Oh-la-la! A horrible meeting!”
(Yasmina Reza – HAMMERKLAVIER)

The world is changing in front of our eyes. Sure, it will take time to realize everything that is happening now. And surely this is a time of reflection. Reflection on important things that not always we have had time to do deeply. Now it’s time to speak about ourselves, our innate, ideological changeover.

The 2020 edition of the festival is dedicated to these issues having front and centre the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven - a great change-maker deeply in love with humanity. There’s a strong connection with what is happening to us. Through him, we can learn many important things for our present and future.
Such is the directness that you consistently hear from Beethoven, whose place in society was that of an exalted celebrity and also a perpetual outsider, isolated by his gruff temperament and later by his deafness. The quarantine mentality emphasizes essentials over cosmetic priorities, which meshes well with his unvarnished, less-filtered, more elemental means of communication.

Beethoven is far more than a commodity. His music is a state of mind.
Besides, he turns 250!