Most people know John Suchet as an ITN reporter and presenter. But that's just his day job. He also tours the country giving presentations on Beethoven's life and music. And that's not all: he has written a three-volume fictionalised biography of the composer, which has won considerable acclaim. This year Suchet will be giving his Beethoven talk not only in England (with the Hallé Orchestra and Mark Elder), but in Vienna and Moscow too.
The Hallé presentation is essentially a lightweight documentary along with a live orchestra and pianist (the Hallé's Janet Fisher). So, as Suchet describes the Moonlight sonata, Fisher plays a few bars (or pages) to illustrate his points. It works extremely well on the whole: Suchet elaborates shamelessly but amusingly on anecdotes from Beethoven's life with the assured delivery and humour of a consummate professional. Though the talk is clearly aimed at a more or less uninitiated audience, it is full of details with which only dedicated Beethovenians would be familiar. One such gem is the story of how Beethoven wrote a 30-second choral work entitled In Praise of Fatness in celebration of the vast dimensions of his friend, the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, with a text that read simply Schuppanzigh ist ein Lump.
Another was the story of how the English virtuoso George Bridgetower - for whom Beethoven wrote the "Kreutzer" sonata - lost his dedication after offending the composer at a party. Beethoven scratched it out and sent the sonata to Rodolfe Kreutzer instead - who never played it - while Bridgetower eventually died in obscurity and poverty somewhere in Peckham.
It seems like the biggest cliche in the book that Suchet's talk should be followed by Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. But the Hallé's playing was stunning. In true period-performance style, the strings played with no vibrato throughout, and with a crispness and precision that was exhilarating. It was one of the finest performances of that work that I have ever heard; and, I suspect, the finest Hallé account of it for a very long time.
