DW documentary wins music award

How different would music history have been if Ludwig van Beethoven had never existed? The 2020 DW documentary "A World without Beethoven?" explores how influential the famous German composer was. Sarah Willis, who plays french horn in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, traveled around Germany and the world, searching for the answer to this question.

Over the course of seven segments, the music documentary illuminates how Beethoven's innovations shaped the following centuries far beyond the boundaries of classical music. How did Beethoven change the image of the musician and the concert business? And what does his "Fifth Symphony" have to do with rock riffs?

Gala at the Luxembourg Philharmonic

The documentary, directed by Martin Roddewig, won the 2022 International Classical Music Award (ICMA) for best video documentary. The jury described the film as "witty and highly entertaining," adding that a world without Beethoven is "simply unimaginable."

The award was presented at a gala event at the Luxembourg Philharmonic on Thursday and was broadcast via livestream on Facebook and the DW YouTube channel DW Classical Music.

The ICMA are presented in 17 categories, from chamber music and opera to contemporary music. The awards' jury — which also includes DW-associated individuals — views, listens to and evaluates an average of more than 3,000 works every year.

Nine additional special prizes are also awarded, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, which this year went to Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer.

The Special Achievement Award honored pianist Michael Korstick, who has recorded all of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Gennaro Cardaropoli, a 24-year-old Italian violinist, won the Young Artist of the Year category.

An honor in Beethoven's big birthday year

"We are a group of 19 independent media from 14 European countries, active in print, radio, online and TV," ICMA jury president and music critic Remy Frank told DW. "Our goal is to explore the ever-growing music market in order to give both recognized as well as young artists and labels greater visibility and media presence," he said, adding that the artists "appreciate ICMA's independence and internationality."

Sarah Willis described the award as a great honor, saying it makes her happy and proud for the whole team that worked on the film. "I personally learned so much from creating this documentary, and it was the perfect way to celebrate Ludwig's 250th birthday."

The music documentary is the final part of a Beethoven trilogy that was produced to mark the composer's 250th birthday in 2020. The other films are "Beethoven's Ninth: Symphony for the World" (2019) and "The Sound of Nature."

Beethoven the revolutionary

Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770. As a young man, the pianist was enthusiastic about the ideas of the French Revolution, and over time, he became a revolutionary in his own right, at least in the field of composition.

After Johann Nepomuk Mälzel invented the metronome in 1815, a device that enables precise time measurement and provides musicians with a constant tempo, Beethoven helped popularize it. Beethoven was one of the first to note such tempo indications on his compositions, even if scholars assume he may have made a mistake in how he applied them.

Beethoven was also the first famous freelance musician. Unlike most of his predecessors, he never had a job at court or church. That allowed him to shape his compositions according to his own wishes, instead of to the wishes of his commissioning patron.

Beethoven did not care much for conventions, and his contemporaries did not always understand his works. His last piano sonata, No. 32, Op. 111, sounds almost like jazz with its sprawling piano cascades and syncopations, as Willis explains in "A World without Beethoven?"

In New York, Willis met legendary jazz trumpeter and artistic and managing director of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), Wynton Marsalis. A great Beethoven fan, Marsalis is particularly fond of the Opus 135 string quartet. Beethoven understands the rhythmic relationship of three beats in a two-beat setting, he says in the film, adding that such a pattern is typical of African or Middle Eastern music. "That's probably where he got it, from Turkish music," Marsalis theorizes in the documentary.

Willis also spoke to rock musicians including Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson and Scorpions guitarist Rudolf Schenker.

The two musicians share guitar riffs that became famous with only three to five notes — just like the opening motif of Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony" ("Ta-ta-ta-taaaa"), probably the most famous four notes in classical music. The motif is the mother of all rock riffs, at least in Europe, Schenker says in the film.

"We are shaped by classical music in such a way that we are attuned to a melody and a certain rhythm. Classical music is in our genes," he says.

This article has been translated from German