Being Beethoven, BBC Four TV

[Barbirollians]

I found the second programme considerably less compelling than the first....

Me too - a great deal of speculation about Beethoven’s love life on the basis of little evidence and I found Mr Swafford annoying.

[LMcD]

Can't say I found it any less gripping, in some ways quite the contrary to someone like me who knows him only as a composer, especially concerning his reciprocated but ultimately thwarted relationship with the aristo lady whose name I now can't recall. I liked the musical excerpts too especially the final electrifying bars from the Missa Solemnis Gloria.

I particularly enjoyed the contributions by the 2 (lady) professors and Mr Swafford.

[Serial_Apologist]

I particularly enjoyed the contributions by the 2 (lady) professors and Mr Swafford.

There's a kind of subtext simmering up in this series, for me, at any rate - namely one of a dysfunctional man, with whom we can but sympathise from afar in time and culture for his lot in life, the spirit of whose music assumed popular appeal both then and since for its life celebratory qualities in the ways in which these were expressed. One either appreciates those impulses and the language in which they were couched or not, and since they seem quintissentially to be found in the music of the period covered by the last episode of this series, it seems to me unsurprising that the late works, in which Beethoven seems to have reached some sort of inner and outer reconciliation, albeit often ambivalently - the string quartets and two sets of piano variations in particular - are the ones that present even-present day advocates the greatest difficulties.