“In the summer of 1812, Goethe and Beethoven were walking arm in arm through the streets of the Bohemian spa resort of Teplitz when their path was blocked by a gaggle of oncoming dukes and duchesses,” writes Stuart Jeffires in Monday’s (1/9) Guardian (London). “In Carl Rohling’s 1887 painting The Incident at Teplitz … in the foreground is Beethoven, barrelling towards us grumpily…. Only one problem: it probably didn’t happen…. It’s one of several anecdotes about Beethoven that are simultaneously celebrated and debunked in a scintillating exhibition in Paris [at the Philharmonie] called Ludwig Van: Le Mythe Beethoven…. The exhibition opens with a cacophony of Beethovens: a video mash-up of concert performances, Chuck Berry duckwalking through Roll Over Beethoven, the Fab Four in Help! singing Ode to Joy in a pub cellar to tame a tiger.… This is a vast multi-media celebration.… Le Mythe Beethoven deconstructs the myth and then puts it back together again.… In the exhibition’s final room, a few of us had our own silent disco through our audio guides…. I was savouring Daft Punk’s Technologic Sonata, a mashup of techno and Beethoven you can watch on YouTube.”
Posted January 10, 2017
